by John Harris
They still stood, however, for German Schrecklichkeit - that toxic frightfulness of the Nazis - and since they had to be beaten, it was Loftus’s opinion that another legend was needed to combat the one Rommel had built up. And oddly enough, the long-nosed general, who’d come out from England only as a second choice, had already started one of his own, different but strangely similar in its austerity and ruthlessness. His attitude was quite clearly not to dance to the German tune, but to play one of his own -- only better -- and first. In the desert, the wolves of Europe were suddenly facing bigger and craftier wolves.
Brigadier Loftus had a whole series of situation reports to prepare, and despite the heat he still went on with them because every minute was important if the Germans were to be defeated. The three arms of their Drang nach Osten had all by the grace of God come to a stop at last - the Russian one at Stalingrad and Moscow, the Balkan one at Crete, and the North African one at Alamein, only a few short miles from Alexandria - but it was still necessary to guarantee the Mediterranean and somehow re-establish a footing in Europe, and the only way to do that was by the conquest of Libya and the driving out of North Africa of every last vestige of the German--Italian occupation.
Since the new commander of the Eighth Army seemed to have some pretty solid ideas on the subject, and vast new supplies of tanks and 25-pounder guns, to Brigadier Loftus it seemed that the extra effort might well be worthwhile, so when the starched and laundered young staff captain appeared in his doorway, he looked up with a frown at the interruption.
‘Chap called Hockold to see you, sir,’ the captain said.
The man in the scruffy galabiya appeared, his skin still dark with the stain on it. His face was lean and, without the ragged headdress, his straight fair hair fell over his eyes like the broken wing of a yellow bird.
‘Hello, George,’ Loftus said. ‘Made it, I see. Brought some good news?’
‘Depends which way you look at it, sir.’ Hockold moved to Loftus’s table, and a mug of tea appeared. ‘I’ve just come from Qaba.’
Loftus studied him carefully over his spectacles. ‘What’s special about Qaba?’ he asked.
‘That’s where Rommel’s got his petrol.’
Loftus gestured. ‘Rommel hasn’t got any petrol. He’s supposed to need thirty thousand tons and, before he can move again, another thirty-five. He’s supposed to be in Berlin, in fact, begging on his bended knees for it.
‘I think it’s different now. There are three petrol ships in Qaba. They came in forty-eight hours ago.’
Loftus’s eyebrows rose. ‘The RAF reported nothing,’ he said.
‘They rigged up camouflage. They had it up within a matter of hours.’
‘How much petrol is there?’
‘I worked it out at thirty thousand tons - at least.’
Loftus whistled. ‘That would make a hell of a difference to how he fights.’
‘Are we expecting an attack?’
‘We’re not. He is. The new commander’s all set to go. Chap called Montgomery. Know him?’
‘Instructor at Camberley when I was there.’
‘Well, I hope he puts the wind up ‘em. For my money he’s all right. He says he’s going to knock Rommel for six clean out of Africa.’
Hockold gave a little smile. ‘It might be harder than he thinks now,’ he pointed out. ‘There’s also a ship loaded with ammunition, a refuelling post in the town where there are two sheds of spare parts, and a dump a mile inland from the harbour. Fortunately for us, their administrative services are unstable and they have no lighters, tugs or lorries.’
Loftus sighed. ‘We’d better let ‘em know at AHQ,’ he said. ‘They’ll get an RAF bang laid on, I suppose.’
‘Not this time. There’s a prisoner of war cage right alongside the harbour.’
Loftus stared at Hockold for a long moment. ‘Got any ideas?’
‘I was thinking of a raid.’
‘Not a hope. Monty’s dead against sideshows. The navy set one up against Benghazi and Tobruk in September. It was a dead loss.’
‘There’s no minefield,’ Hockold persisted. ‘And I’ve got a chart.’ He placed an envelope on the desk. ‘A few other things too : Numbers. Positions of the ships. Gun emplacements. Three old French 47s and heavy machine guns, but not much else. Flak guns are all inland.’
Loftus paused; then he smiled and pushed his papers away. ‘You make out a good case,’ he admitted. ‘Perhaps we should let the bigwigs decide.’
As it happened, even as Hockold prepared to head for Eighth Army headquarters to lay his ideas before the new general in command, the signals that Colonel Hochstatter had made about the arrival of the four supply ships to General Stumme, holding the fort for Rommel at Afrika Korps headquarters, were just starting to bear fruit. Qaba, which was normally used only when Mersa Matruh and Bardia were full, had increased enormously in importance since the British retreat in June. Now the lines of communication went all the way back to Tripoli, and as it suddenly occurred to someone that they were incredibly vulnerable, a message was directed to Hochstatter that the four ships were to be unloaded at once.
Captain Hrabak, the supply officer, permitted himself a cynical smile. ‘What with?’ he asked. ‘We’re short of lorries.’
‘Lighters then,’ Hochstatter suggested. ‘Across to the concrete below the POW compound.’ He turned to the signals officer. ‘Ask for lighters, Tarnow.’
‘Where from?’ Tarnow demanded. He was popularly supposed to be a member of the Feldsicherheitspolizei or the Liebstandarte Adolf Hitler Waffen S.S. and was surly, arrogant and indifferent in manner, which gave the stories a substance of truth and made them all wary of him.
Hochstatter drew a deep breath. ‘Try the navy at Mersa Matruh,’ he said. ‘And we can hire all the Arabs we want.’
‘They work too slowly. It’s not their war.’ Hrabak gestured angrily. ‘We need transport. The panzers took all ours at the end of August. It never came back. If they want what we’ve got, we’ve got to have lorries.’
Hochstatter frowned. What Hrabak said was only too true. A few lorries had been commandeered, together with everything the wretched Italians possessed, but it was obviously not going to be enough by a long way. Unknown to Hochstatter, however, his signals to army headquarters had been duly noted, and General Stumme was well aware there was a considerable amount of worry in the forward areas caused by a shortage of petrol. He also knew that a British Commando brigade had been sent to the Middle East the previous year and, though it was known to have been badly cut up in Crete, he had no knowledge of whether its losses had been made good and he was very concerned in case it attempted something against his supplies.
‘Tell Colonel Hochstatter that the defences of Qaba must be strengthened,’ he directed. ‘At once. And keep me informed about what’s being done because we don’t really know yet what the Eighth Army’s up to.’
The Eighth Army was up to a lot of things, chief of which were the new general’s preparations to knock the Afrika Korps out of Africa, for which the plans, code-named Lightfoot, had been pushed ahead at tremendous speed.
Army headquarters was a group of caravans at Burg el Arab, twenty miles from Alexandria, set on the coast where the staff could walk straight from their work into the sea. Despite the rumours that he allowed no smoking and no drinking, the new commander was not a killjoy.
‘He’ll laugh if it’s funny,’ Loftus said as his jeep jolted along. ‘And he doesn’t give a damn about saluting. They say that Freyberg suggested that, since the New Zealanders didn’t go in for it much, he should try waving at them. To everybody’s surprise he did, and they waved back.’
His belly jerked as he laughed. ‘The chaps who’ve flogged up and down the same bit of desert till they’re sick of it love him,’ he went on. ‘Though he’s a bit difficult with generals. He says they know a lot about fighting but not much about war, and the machine’s running properly now for the first time since Wavell left.’
As the dusty jeep drew to a stop, the new general was standing at a table under a strip of camouflage netting which threw a speckled shadow over the map he was studying. As the brakes squealed, several of the officers round him turned to look at it and, though the army commander didn’t even bother to lift his head, what he said was sharp enough to bring their attention hurriedly back to the map again.
As he finished speaking, Loftus stepped forward and saluted. ‘Colonel Hockold, sir,’ he said.
The narrow head seemed to duck and lift, and the pale blue eyes stared piercingly upwards. ‘Still up to your tricks, I see, Hockold,’ the general said. ‘I seem to remember a nasty little night exercise when I was instructing at Camberley in 1930. You won, if I remember rightly, with rather a dirty trick.’ The thin severe face cracked into a frosty smile. ‘Just the type we need, because we’re fighting some pretty tough customers out here.’ He patted a folder on the table alongside the map. ‘I’ve read your report.’
He paused and Hockold waited. The general’s head ducked again and the pale eyes came up once more to his face.
‘Not keen on sideshows,’ he went on. ‘Waste of time. Waste of time. Didn’t think much of the one on Benghazi and Tobruk in September. A frontal assault on a heavily defended base seems unnecessarily hazardous. Are you sure about that swept minefield?’
‘Certain, sir,’ Hockold said. ‘The harbour clearance units are still busy at Bardia and Mersa Matruh for the next sweep forward.’
The general frowned. ‘There’ll be no sweep anywhere if I have anything to do with it,’ he observed acidly. ‘The only sweeping that’s going to be done will be done by me.’ He stood for a moment with his hands behind his back, his sharp nose thrust forward, then he looked up again. ‘So perhaps we’d better set something up, if only to make them think we’re coming in by the back door. And you’d better handle it yourself since you know where everything is. It’ll take about a week to organize, I imagine, and that’ll work out just about right, because I’ll be ready around the night of 23 October.’
He stared thoughtfully at his feet. ‘You must accept that we’re a bit stretched at the moment,’ he went on. ‘And there are one or two other things to take into consideration, too, because in early November I gather we’re going into Morocco, Tunis and Algeria.’ He turned to one of the officers behind him, a thin good-looking man in shorts. ‘Freddie, see that he gets full authority for this thing and have the navy and the RAF warned that he’s coming.’ He swung back to Hockold, lean, tense, and excited by his own imaginings. ‘We’ve got to pull it off this time, Hockold, but I think we shall do it all right. I think we shall. We’re going to knock him clean out of Africa this time, so that there can be no coming back for more. Get him down to Gorton, Freddie. He’ll fix him up.’
As it happened, however, when Hockold arrived in Cairo General Gorton was in no position to fix anybody up. He had been whipped off half an hour before to hospital with an agonizing ear infection he’d been fighting for days, and in his place was an entirely different officer who was still a little lost in his new job. He didn’t seem very willing to make decisions and Hockold had a suspicion he wouldn’t last long under the new regime.
‘Go and see General Pierson,’ he said. ‘I’ll tell him you’re coming.’
General Pierson, however, was busy near Ismailia, and Hockold was shunted through several officers with Baden-Powell shorts and chests like the contents of a paint box to see a Major-General Murray, a heavy-featured man with a bulldog jaw and a hostile frown who stared at him discouragingly as he entered. ‘Qaba,’ he said at once. ‘They tell me you’re going to put on a bit of a show there. Do a bit of damage and all that.’
Hockold swallowed. There was always an enervating lassitude over Cairo; the tropical rain from the highlands of Ethiopia and the swamps of Uganda swept down to distribute the muddy water in a thousand and one canals across the Delta, so that out of the steamy soil the foetid heat intensified in a pall of dust and filth that lay over the streets of the city. The dirt was persistent and Cairo -- corrupt, lackadaisical, easy-going and flashily romantic at night, despite the war only a hundred miles away -- showed no sign of a spartan warrior existence. Too many battles had already been lost there, too many plans ruined, and Hockold, still only a lieutenant-colonel, felt he had to come to the point quickly.
‘Sir,’ he said, ‘please don’t pass me on again. This operation’s been authorized by the army commander himself and I’ve only just over a week to set it up.’
Murray scowled back at him under his heavy eyebrows; then a sudden unexpected smile changed his whole face.
‘Better sit down and tell me what you want,’ he said.
Hockold drew a deep breath. ‘I want transport -’ he began.
‘Lorries?’
‘No, sir. We’re going by sea.’
‘Can’t be done!’ Murray sat up briskly. ‘The navy’s got nothing to spare.’
‘It’s the only way it can be done, sir.’
Murray’s smile came again. ‘Well, we’ll leave that for the moment,’ he said. ‘What else?’
‘Men, sir.’
‘How many?’
‘Five hundred, sir. Trained men. Not people who’ve just arrived.’
The frown returned to Murray’s face. ‘General Montgomery got rid of all specialist sub-units,’ he pointed out. ‘And we’re already scraping the gutters for his battle. Every decent outfit we could find’s already moved up into the blue.’ He paused, his face thoughtful. ‘You’ll have to rehearse. Where are you going to do it?’
‘Gott el Scouab. There are ravines there, one of them steep like the Shariah Jedid at Qaba.’
‘Gould you do it in a week?’
‘If they’re the right chaps, sir.’
‘I’ll see what I can do. Go on.’
‘What about naval support fire, sir?’
‘Not a chance.’
‘The general said there had to be no mistake, sir.’
Murray’s heavy body sagged. ‘Unfortunately, Monty’s not an admiral.’
‘Sir, there are three 47s guarding the harbour.’
Murray wrote something on a pad. ‘Well, we won’t start shouting “Abandon ship” till the bloody thing goes down,’ he said. ‘Anything else?’
‘Signallers. Medical people. Demolition experts.’
Murray thought for a moment then he gave an unexpected grin and tapped Hockold’s plan. ‘Sounds all rather worthwhile,’ he said. ‘I’m told you’ve been behind Jerry’s lines for three months.’
‘Four, sir.’
‘Well, you can’t sit around with your thumb in your bum till I’ve talked to everybody. How’d you like to nip out for a drink with my planning officer? I’d laid it on to go myself but I suspect now I’m going to be busy for an hour or two.’
Hockold smiled, grateful that out of all Cairo’s armchair warriors he’d found one who was prepared to forsake his evening gin to do some work. ‘I’ve a little drinking to catch up with, sir,’ he admitted.
Murray nodded. ‘Good. My planning officer’s got transport. Sound operator. B.A., Aberdeen. But see you’re back by seven o’clock because I suspect we shall be whipping you off to see the Navy or somebody.’
He pressed a bell and an ATS officer appeared. She had a splendid figure and Hockold was quietly admiring it when Murray gestured. ‘Kirstie,’ he said. ‘This is Colonel Hockold. Hockold, this is my niece and my planning officer - Kirstie McRuer.’
3
It was decided the attack should involve all three services and take the form of a Combined Operations raid.
Kirstie McRuer was twenty-five, tall and straight-backed, with green eyes and thick chestnut hair. She had been in the Middle East for eighteen months and was wary of predatory officers.
‘Because I’m with the army,’ she explained, ‘most of them seem to think I’m a sort of camp-follower. In fact, quite a lot of us are in Planning now and doing very well at it, too.’
&nbs
p; They were sitting on the terrace of the officers’ club, and in the odd moments of silence they could hear the grumble of the guns to the west. It seemed a strange sound in the light-hearted atmosphere about them, which was like that of an expensive Thames-side pub on a Sunday morning in peacetime. There was even a Cairo tennis professional in white flannels watching a group round the pool where a few Egyptian girls smiled, beautifully dressed and poised. Kirstie wondered how much they detested the British.
She was unobtrusively studying Hockold as they chatted over their drinks. He had sat in silence as they had driven from Murray’s office through endless lines of ammunition trucks -- even a column of German prisoners, singing the song that every army in North Africa sang.
‘Deine Schritte kennt sie, deinen zieren Gang,
Alle Abend brennt sie, doch mich vergass sie lang.. .’
At the club Hockold had helped her from the jeep with an old-fashioned solemnity which was strange in Cairo where everybody accepted women officers as equals. It told her he’d been a long time away from female company and was faintly embarrassed by it.
Nearby, two cavalrymen in faded drill were playing table tennis as if the result of the war were at stake. They were both burned black and looked as though they’d just come in from the desert. There was something of the same worn look about Hockold. He was tall and slender, thin-hipped in a pair of old doeskin trousers bleached almost white, but under the mixture of nonchalance and professionalism which made up the side of him that was a soldier, there was also an uncertain discomfort that told her he was shy.
A young officer in neat khaki was eyeing her hungrily from a nearby table, and she decided he’d probably been on a troopship coming round the Cape for two months and was desperate for female company. Trying to draw Hockold out, she indicated him with her eyes.