by Shaun Clarke
‘If Halliman comes along first,’ Stirling said, ‘let’s make sure he doesn’t drive over the mines.’
‘He’ll come in off the desert,’ Lorrimer said, ‘coming right up behind us. We’ve no need for concern there.’
With nothing else to do but wait, they took the cold food from their rucksacks and ate it while watching the silvery light of the distant explosions in Tamit, which made them feel better. They had finished the food and were just opening their water bottles when an Italian Army oil lorry came along the road from the direction of Sirte, almost certainly heading for the airfield.
Stirling and Lorrimer dropped low, forgetting their thirst, and watched keenly as the huge tanker trundled along the road and ran straight on to the buried land-mines.
The mines went off simultaneously under the front of the vehicle, blowing the surface of the road apart and lifting the driver’s cabin right off the ground on a fountain of shattered tarmac with soil and sand spewing up around it. Even as the cabin was rising up and toppling over, the back of the tanker kept moving forward, propelled by its own momentum, and bounced up off the cabin to form a screeching tangle of steel over the confusion of soil and smoke. Then the cabin turned over, smashing sideways onto the road, and the tanker, crashing down onto the cabin, was caught in the heat and force of the exploding land-mines and exploded with even more force, spewing the vivid-yellow fire of blazing oil into the smoke-blackened sky.
The noise was unbelievable, almost palpable in its force, making Stirling and Lorrimer cover their ears, even as the awesome heat from the burning oil swept over them in what seemed like a series of separate, accelerating, scorching blasts. The ground shook beneath them when the tanker crashed back down, bounced once or twice, belching out even more burning oil, then finally settled at the far side of the road in a pool of fire that filled the sky above with billowing black smoke.
In the flames, in that circle of dazzling yellow fire, the steel frame of the tanker, already scorched black, was melting like tar and dripping onto the melting tarmac of the road. The men in the driver’s cabin, killed instantly by the blast, were turned into dripping fat and charred, crumbling bone that would, when the flames had died down, be no more than dust.
‘Christ!’ Lorrimer exclaimed softly. ‘I wasn’t expecting …’
Stirling cut him short by placing his hand on his wrist and gently shaking it. ‘A lot of Axis planes will now go short of petrol,’ he said. ‘We’ve just done our bit, Sergeant.’
Nevertheless, the fiercely burning vehicle was bound to draw the attention of the Axis forces in the airfield, so Stirling and Lorrimer were greatly relieved when, at the agreed time, almost to the minute, at 0015 hours, Captain Halliman returned in his LRDG truck to pick them up and drive them back to the desert RV. He glanced at the blazing oil tanker and said, ‘What the …?’
‘Let’s go,’ Stirling said.
Halliman’s driver took them 90 miles across the desert, stopping only to repair the odd puncture, and had them back at the RV by eight the next morning.
‘How did it go with Callaghan?’ was the first question asked by Stirling when he entered the radio room in Jalo base camp.
12
Captain Callaghan’s group had spent an uneventful Thursday before being dropped by the LRDG within striking distance of the Tamit airfield. When the trucks had moved off again, Callaghan glanced around him and saw that he was in the middle of a flat desert plain with no cover whatsoever, other than starlit darkness. The airfield, however, was only a few miles due west and could be seen in the distance, its hangars visible as rectangular blocks darker than the night and framed by the stars. An MSR ran straight through the desert directly to the airfield.
‘We’re completely exposed out here,’ Callaghan told his second-in-command, Jim ‘Jimbo’ Ashman, ‘so let’s get there as quickly as humanly possible. Single file. Let’s hike it.’
Jimbo raised his right hand with the palm open, to indicate ‘Single file’, and the men obeyed his silent command, moving out behind him and Callaghan one by one, until they had formed a long, irregular line with Jimbo out front as lead scout, Frankie Turner coming up the rear as Tail-end Charlie, and the rest of the men covering firing arcs to the left and right.
Callaghan, close behind Jimbo, was carrying the bag filled with Lewes bombs and fuses, as well as a Thompson M1928 sub-machine-gun with a 50-round drum magazine. The rest of the men were armed with tommy-guns, Sten guns and Lee-Enfield .303-inch bolt-action rifles. Everyone in the group was also carrying a Browning 9mm High Power handgun holstered at the waist, but otherwise they were travelling light, with no cumbersome rucksacks, or even water bottles, to slow them down. The only sound as they hiked across the flat plain was the clanking of weapons.
Little could be seen in the dark other than the outlying hangars and other buildings of the airfield, which loomed larger and became more detailed as the patrol advanced on them. Surprisingly, there was no fencing around the airstrip and no sentries had so far been seen. Out to the side of the buildings the aircraft were lined up along the runway, a mixture of German Ju-87 Stuka dive-bombers and Italian Capronis, none of them guarded.
They must be pretty sure of themselves, Callaghan thought. Too damned confident for their own good.
About 20 yards from the wooden buildings, he raised his right hand to halt the men, then leaned forward on his left leg and waved the hand in towards his outstretched right leg, signalling that the men behind him should lie belly-down on the ground. When they had done so, Callaghan studied the buildings and noted that a faint line of light was escaping from below the door of one of the wooden huts. Even at this distance, he thought he could hear the murmur of conversation.
Climbing to his feet, he ran forward at the crouch and dropped down again beside Jimbo, who was lying on the ground with his Sten gun aimed at the building.
‘You stay here with the men,’ Callaghan whispered, ‘while I advance and check that building. I think there are soldiers inside.’
‘I think you’re right,’ Jimbo said.
‘Take this bag of Lewes bombs. At my signal, or at the first sign of trouble, head straight for those aircraft and destroy them.’
‘With you all the way, boss.’
After leaving the bag with Jimbo, Callaghan jumped up and advanced at the crouch until his shadow was touching the line of light beaming out under the door of the long wooden building. The windows were covered in black-out curtains. Stopping at the edge of the line of light, Callaghan heard laughter and a babble, of talk from inside. This convinced him that the building was either a mess or the aircrew’s briefing hut.
Callaghan, who had been bored for a long time, felt an edge of excitement.
What the hell, he thought. If we try bombing the planes someone’s bound to hear us, so I might as well do as much damage here as I possibly can.
He glanced back over his shoulder and saw his men still on the ground. Turning back to the front, he took a deep breath, then kicked the door open and rushed inside.
The light briefly dazzled him. All conversation was stilled. The Germans were gathered around a long table, drinking beer, smoking cigarettes and playing cards or reading. They stared at him, startled, not quite realizing who he was, and were still trying to come to terms with his presence when he opened fire with his tommy-gun.
The noise was shocking in that small space, and made worse by the additional screaming of the men as they died in the hail of bullets, falling out of their chairs or over the table, knocking over bottles and mugs, smashing plates, making ashtrays flip and spin in the air, scattering clouds of grey ash. Others kicked their chairs back and dived to the floor, scrambling under the table, some of them bravely grabbing for their weapons even as the bullets were stitching them.
Callaghan fired in a wide arc, turning from left to right, the roaring weapon jolting his whole body as he backed towards the door. More men shuddered and died. The wounded screamed in pain. Bullets ricocheted
off the walls to make a harsh drumming sound that seemed worse when some light-bulbs exploded, plunging the room into semi-darkness.
One of the Germans rolled over, raising his Luger pistol and taking aim, but Callaghan put a short burst into him, shot out the remaining light-bulbs, then backed out through the door as the survivors scrambled frantically in the darkness. As Callaghan stepped outside, some of the Germans in the hut fired their weapons and he heard the bullets whistling past him.
Turning around to face the night, he saw his own men racing across the dark field to get at the Axis aircraft. He raced after them, bullets still hissing by, and only turned around to give the men covering fire when he reached the edge of the airfield. He cut down some of the Germans running out of the building, but others were bunched up behind the windows and firing from there.
‘Bugger this for a joke!’ Callaghan muttered, determined to blow up some planes himself. ‘You men!’ he called out to the SAS troopers racing past him. ‘I want four of you to stay here and keep those bastards over there occupied. Pour a fusillade of fire through those windows and keep them pinned down.’
‘Yes, boss,’ Corporal Peterson said, waving three of the troopers over to him. ‘Spread out and give covering fire,’ he told them. ‘Pour it in through those windows.’
The corporal and three privates were already firing a combination of Lee-Enfield .303s and tommy-guns from the kneeling position when Callaghan raced after the other men. He finally caught up with Jimbo, who was kneeling beside a Junkers, distributing Lewes bombs and fuses to the troopers. Some of the men were already racing between the aircraft and lobbing the small bombs up onto their wings as if on a cricket pitch.
‘Give me a couple of those,’ Callaghan said. ‘I’ve waited a long time for this.’
‘Haven’t we all?’ Jimbo replied, handing Callaghan three of the conveniently small, light bombs. ‘The fuses are set for thirty minutes, so don’t hang around, boss.’
‘I won’t,’ Callaghan said. Glancing back over his shoulder, he saw that Peterson and his three troopers were still pumping bullets into the hut. Running towards the nearest untouched Italian Caproni to place his first Lewes bomb, Callaghan noticed that when the other men had planted their supply of bombs, they were going back to swell the ranks of Peterson’s group and add to the covering fire.
‘Good men,’ Callaghan whispered as he lobbed his first Lewes bomb up onto the wing of the Caproni. When he saw it nestling safely, he ran on to the next plane, another Caproni, and did the same, hardly aware that German bullets were zipping by dangerously close to his head. After placing his third bomb, he raced back to Jimbo, who was sitting upright over the collapsed canvas bag, opening and closing both hands to show that they were empty.
Glancing behind him, Callaghan saw that there were no more troopers in the vicinity of the aircraft – they had all joined Peterson to pour fire into the hut – so he knew that they had all disposed of their bombs.
‘How many bombs were in the bag?’ he asked Jimbo.
‘Twenty-three,’ came the reply.
‘Damn!’ Callaghan growled in frustration. ‘There must be at least thirty planes here. What a bloody waste!’
‘Twenty-three planes knocked out isn’t bad,’ Jimbo said. ‘Assuming, of course, that the bombs go off. I think we’d better pull out now.’
Callaghan checked his watch. ‘Five minutes to zero,’ he said. ‘Yes, Jimbo, let’s go.’
Though pleased that twenty-three bombs had been planted, Callaghan still could not bear the thought of not doing more damage. Thus, as he was beating a retreat with the other men, still aiming a fusillade of fire at the barracks to keep the Germans pinned down as long as possible, he could not control himself when he saw the glow of instrument lights in the cockpit of a Caproni that obviously had just been worked on.
‘Damn it!’ Callaghan exclaimed, staring hungrily at the glowing aircraft. ‘If I can’t bomb another of those bastards, I’ll take it out with my bare hands.’
‘No, boss!’ Jimbo bawled over the sound of his own roaring tommy-gun as the Germans poured out of the distant barracks. ‘Those planes are about to blow up!’
Ignoring him, Callaghan raced across the airstrip to the glowing Caproni, even as the German troops were also heading in that direction.
Some of the Germans stopped to take aim and fire at Callaghan, but as they did so, the first Lewes bomb exploded, blowing the wing off a Junkers, setting fire to its fuselage, then igniting its oil and making it erupt with a mighty roar, spewing jagged yellow flames and billowing black smoke.
Callaghan was climbing onto the wing of the Caproni, to get at the cockpit, when another Lewes bomb exploded, setting fire to a second Junkers, followed almost instantly by a third explosion, which blew a hole in the side of a Caproni. The heat of the fires beat back the advancing Germans, then obscured them in oily smoke, enabling Callaghan to reach the cockpit of the Caproni, where, in a fit of mute fury, he ripped the instrument panel out with his bare hands. Other Lewes bombs were exploding in quick succession, destroying more planes and filling the night with fire and smoke, as Callaghan threw the instrument panel to the ground, then followed it down. He glanced around him with pleasure as more aircraft exploded, then followed Jimbo and the others, now using the pall of smoke to give them cover as they raced away from the airfield.
Knowing that there was no time to lose, after reaching the head of the column Callaghan set a punishing pace for the march back to the desert RV. Rising to the challenge, and with little more to carry than their personal weapons and ammunition, the men kept up the pace and had soon left the airfield far behind. When they glanced back over their shoulders they could only make it out by the crimson glowing in the sky caused by the fires, and by the spasmodic, fan-shaped, silvery light of further explosions.
Reaching the general area of the RV, where they had expected to find the lorries, the men were briefly but dangerously confused by lights which at first they thought were being waved by the LRDG. In fact, they were torches being flashed by the Germans and Italians who had come in pursuit of them, losing them in the darkness and now circling blindly around them, unaware of their presence.
Callaghan used a hand signal to order his men the lie belly-down on the desert floor, where they stayed, making no sound, until the lights from the Axis vehicles had moved off to the west. When they had disappeared completely, heading away from the SAS men, Callaghan let the latter stand up again and use the whistling signals they had devised for attracting the LRDG in the desert’s darkness.
Eventually, while Callaghan was carefully following his compass course, he heard the first whistled replies. Heading in that direction, he eventually saw the dark outline of the LRDG lorries, none of which had its headlights on. Drawing closer, he saw some of the men waving.
‘A sight for sore eyes,’ he said.
‘Too right,’ Jimbo agreed.
‘I’m dying for a bloody drink,’ Frankie informed them, ‘so let’s waste no more time, lads.’
As the SAS troopers hurried across the starlit plain, the LRDG soldiers stepped out to greet them like long-lost brothers; a lot of backs were slapped, hands shaken and congratulations offered.
‘Twenty-three hits? Bloody terrific. Here, have a drink, mate!’
Desperately thirsty, Frankie was one of the first to be handed a water bottle by one of the Rhodesian drivers. He swallowed a huge mouthful before realizing, as his throat burned and he almost choked, that the water bottle contained rum. Recovering, and ignoring the laughing Rhodesians, he drank even more, then passed the bottle to his good friend Jimbo.
‘When you get right down to it,’ he said, ‘there’s nothing like water – pure, clean water.’
After drinking deeply from the same bottle, Jimbo felt obliged to agree.
‘Great water!’ he said.
Both of them slept like the dead throughout the long, rough journey back across the desert to the Jalo Oasis, where they were awakened by we
lcoming bursts of gunfire and cheers from most of their mates.
Even as Callaghan was marching to Stirling’s tent to submit his report, Lewes and the men of S2 Patrol were on the road to El Agheila.
13
Because El Agheila was only half the distance from Jalo Oasis that Stirling had had to travel, Captain ‘Jock’ Lewes did not set out with S2 Patrol until two days after him. He was, in fact, just beginning his journey as Stirling and Callaghan were being brought back from Sirte and Tamit by the LRDG.
Lewes led his convoy of trucks out of Jalo with a great deal of pleasure, delighted to be back in action at last. Ever since serving in Layforce’s No 8 Commando in Syria, he had gained a taste for adventure and was more easily bored than he had ever been. A low boredom threshold had always been one of his problems, but now his tolerance for inactivity was non-existent. Though superficially quiet and thoughtful, Lewes was a man of restless energy and vivid imagination who had to be kept engaged all the time.
While the early training of L Detachment in Kabrit had kept him busy and satisfied – perfecting parachute landings, studying the art of desert survival, even inventing the bomb named after him – there could be no denying that since arriving at the Jalo base, where Stirling had been forced to wait for the right time to launch the raids, Lewes had almost gone mad with boredom. He had, of course, filled the time with more desert training and weapons practice, but those could not compensate for the real thing and his patience had worn thin.
Now, as he was driven out of Jalo Oasis by his LRDG driver, Thomas ‘Tom Boy’ Cook, he felt almost joyous.
This was regardless of the fact that the burly NCO in the rear seat, LRDG Sergeant Brendan McGee, did not approve of Lewes’s insistence that they travel in this wonderful old Lancia staff car instead of an LRDG Chevrolet lorry.
‘The Lancia’s a fancy car all right,’ McGee had sternly informed him, ‘but it’s not one to get you through the desert. Take a Chevrolet, sir.’