by John Harris
And react all the more violently, Hockold thought.
Torrance continued. ‘We feel,’ he said, ‘that your operation should therefore be timed for the third night of the attack, when they’re preoccupied with watching their rear. After that first dummy raid, a genuine one could have them running about like hens in hysterics. The longer you can stay there the better.’
Hockold frowned. The operation, which he’d envisaged as a quick in-and-out, seemed to be growing into something else entirely.
Torrance seemed unaware of his increasing anger and was talking rapidly so that Hockold wondered how much his opinions were his own and how much the general’s. ‘We mustn’t have another woolly operation like that one against Benghazi and Tobruk,’ he was saying. ‘They were trying to win the war on the cheap in those days. Typical Delta staff work. Too complicated. Dismal failure. All the seaborne people landing in the wrong places. What are the chances of releasing the prisoners at Qaba?’
‘We have to release them,’ Hockold snapped. ‘Before we can do the rest of the job.’
Torrance looked up, startled.’ Oh! Do you?’
‘But we can’t look after them. We’ll be too busy.’
‘We were expecting –‘
Hockold shook his head. ‘My responsibility’s to destroy the ships and the petrol dump, sir. They’ll have to take their chance.’
Torrance stared at him, frowning, and Hockold continued.
‘If I’m successful and the army’s successful, sir, any who don’t make it will be released within a matter of days anyway, so it isn’t worth making too much of them. Their only importance is that they must be allowed to disperse before the ships go up. We can’t afford to be hampered and the ships come first. They must be destroyed.’
How though?
It was still a question that troubled Hockold a great deal.
Kirstie was also looking worried as he passed her desk. ‘I’ve got your signallers, George,’ she said. ‘But demolition experts are harder to come by. They’ve formed an Administrative Assault Force to open up the ports after their capture, and they’ve roped in everybody who knows anything about it. However, the RAF’s got. a few they use for airfields. Would they be any good?’
‘Do they know how to blow up ships?’
‘I shouldn’t think so.’
Hockold sighed. He wasn’t sure that it would matter in the end, anyway, because he couldn’t imagine anyone back home losing any sleep over a raid on Qaba, whether it were successful or not, and he wouldn’t be there, in any case, to answer the arguments.
The blank spots that had been occurring in his mind ever since daylight had continued all morning so that it was as if his brain had melted and the earth had stood still, and he’d seen himself quite clearly, dusty with death as he’d seen so many other men in the last three years. The khamseen sifted through the bones they’d scattered like ivory splinters across the desert, and for the first time since arriving in the Middle East he felt certain that his own were going to join them.
He realized he hadn’t spoken and that Kirstie was staring up at him. She looked tired and seemed to think he wasn’t satisfied with her efforts.
‘George,’ she said, ‘believe me, I’m doing everything I can. I really am. I’ve got a stake in this operation, too, you know. And not just that - ‘ she looked down at the desk ‘- I told you yesterday. I want you to come back.’
He wondered if his thoughts showed in his face, and made an effort to indicate his gratitude for what she’d done. ‘Of course.’ he said. ‘I know that really. It’s just that everybody wants me to do so many things but can’t give me the means.’
When he went into Murray’s office, however, Murray seemed surprisingly cheerful.
‘Qaba,’ he said at once. ‘Bryant’s come up with rather a bright idea. Or at least one of his chaps has. You might find it interesting.’
They climbed into Murray’s car and headed for Alex, moving through suburbs where native children, their stick-like legs twinkling, ran alongside crying for biscuits and bully and baksheesh. Murray was in good spirits.
‘Things are looking up,’ he said. ‘I’ve got you a couple of old Honeys. They’re not so hot and 9th Armoured, where I found ‘em, apologize profusely because they’re not so new either. But they’ve got the modified armour -- fifty millimetres on the nose -- and 37 mm guns with plenty of traverse and elevation. You’ll know more about them than I do. 3rd Hussars who own them, say they’d be very happy if you’d simply abandon ‘em when you’ve finished with ‘em so they can put ‘em down as “Lost due to enemy action”, and get two new ones.’
Hockold said nothing. The sun was hot and the streets contained the usual hordes of cringing dogs, blind beggars, shoe-shine boys, fly-whisk vendors, acrobats and snake charmers. It all seemed a little unreal in his odd mood of foreboding, so that it was a pleasure as they turned out of Ras el Tin Street to see a smartly dressed, well-ironed Marine guard drinking tea in a hut by the dock gate and the painted initials indicating the offices of high-ranking naval men.
Smudges of barrage balloons marked the sky. Between the buildings they could see dazzle-painted merchantmen cross-hatched by the spars and masts of native vessels, and not far away a ship on its side, its upperworks ripped and twisted, a great deal of rust showing underneath.
‘Business before pleasure,’ Murray said. ‘We’ll inspect the LCT before we go to receive the glad hand about the plan. Then we’ll know what we’re talking about.’
Landing Craft (Tank) 11 was old and badly in need of a lick of paint, and her captain seemed as battered as his ship. He was a middle-aged ex-Merchant Navy officer called Carter and he led them about the ship, scruffy, draggle-tailed and ugly, singing to himself as he went -- ‘I’d like to sleep with Nazimova. . . .’ It was only as he pushed past that Hockold caught the words, with a mouthful of bad breath.
With his ravaged face and a tatty beard that made him look like a rat peering through a hedge, Hockold wondered what he’d picked up. Even his ship looked as though it were something the navy was trying to get rid of, a cross between a barge and a Noah’s Ark with its dredger-like bows and patches of rust. Lying nearby were three big Fairmiles and three elderly teak-built RAF rescue launches. Like the landing craft they all looked very much as though they were considered expendable.
Murray pulled a face. ‘Not what you’d call exactly prepossessing,’ he said. ‘Let’s hope the plan’s got more weight to it than they have.’
The plan proved to be the brainchild of a commander on Bryant’s planning staff called Babington. He was small and grey-haired and looked vaguely like a bus conductor, but he was clearly a man with drive.
‘You sure about this swept channel outside Qaba?’ he asked immediately.
‘Absolutely sure,’ Hockold said.
‘Well, we’ll have to do a bit of checking on our own, of course, but if you’re right, I think I can help you.’
‘Do we have a ship yet?’ Hockold asked.
‘Yes.’ Babington smiled and went on cheerfully. ‘She’s even got a gun.’
‘What is she?’
‘Umberto Uno. Italian coaster we picked up a fortnight ago full of arms and ammunition for the Afrika Korps.’
‘For God’s sake!’ Hockold glanced at Murray. ‘You’re not offering me a coaster, are you?’
Murray’s face didn’t change its expression. Neither did Babington’s. ‘Yes, I am,’ he smiled. ‘And if you’ll listen, you’ll see I’m offering you not only a coaster - and a pretty fast one at that which’ll be more than big enough to remove your two thousand prisoners -- but I’m also offering you a plan. Courtesy of the Royal Navy Christmas Parcels and Free Gift Scheme.’
He leaned forward. ‘I’ve been over your suggestions,’ he went on, ‘and I visualize what you’re going to do to be this: our ship -- whatever she happens to be and at the moment she happens to be Umberto Uno - goes down the outside of the mole, with the water-boat Horambeb hard alongsid
e. Horambeb goes up against the wall where the Germans moored their lighter, and you get your ladders against the mole from her. Is that roughly how you saw it?’
‘Roughly.’
‘Right. Shore parties! How many had you visualized?’
Hockold was frowning. ‘Five,’ he said. ‘One to hold the centre of the town, the others to blow the ships and dumps and release the prisoners.’
Babington smiled again. ‘I take it that the party by the Roman arch is the key to the whole operation.’
‘Without them in position, the others won’t be able to move.’ Hockold was sitting up straight now, his eyes angry, his lips tight. ‘And we haven’t got them off yet,’ he reminded. ‘That sea wall’s a long run and it’s covered every bit of the way by machine guns. We need something to keep the Germans busy until we get the tanks ashore.’
Babington held up his hands in protest. ‘Give me a chance,’ he said. ‘I’ve thought of that. While Umberto and Horambeb are getting alongside, the LCT’s disembarking her tanks on to the beach at the landward end of the mole to deal with the guns. They go up the slip and hit the guns one after the other -bedoink - bedoink - bedoink.’ He was smiling and to the worried Hockold he seemed to regard the affair as a joke. ‘With them are the party to deal with the fuel depot and they nip up the Shariah Jedid while the Germans are busy with the tanks. The warehouse party travel in the naval launches and disembark across Horambeb. The POW party are in the RAF launches which break off outside the harbour and head for a point behind the Mantazeh Palace. The ships demolition party and the town centre party disembark from Umberto Uno.’ He sat back, pulled forward a chart of Alexandria Harbour and jabbed a finger at it. ‘At this moment,’ he said. ‘Umberto’s anchored just there. I can arrange for her to be fixed up with a few extra guns. Not much, and mostly light, but they’ll work. I can even hide ‘em in wooden boxes that look like deck cargo. I can also give you a good gunnery officer, and put grapnels and gangways aboard her, too, so that the men inside her can be off her in a matter of minutes.’
Hockold glanced again at Murray but Murray’s face was still a mask. ‘Providing we can get her alongside,’ he said doggedly. ‘How do you propose to do that?’
Babington smiled. ‘Force and fraud are cardinal virtues in war,’ he said. ‘Suppose she escapes?’
‘Escapes?’
‘It would have to look real, of course, because the Germans would be as suspicious as hell. But if it seemed genuine they’d allow her to approach Qaba near enough for her to run in, wouldn’t they?’
Hockold’s interest was caught. ‘Go on,’ he said.
Babington grinned. ‘At the moment, she’s got an old motor launch alongside as a guardship and her crew’s still aboard, together with a few pongoes with rifles. Suppose during the night “the harsh and boisterous tongue of war” is heard - not only in the ships nearby but all over the bloody shore, too - and the launch sinks and Umberto up-anchors and disappears. What would one think?’
‘That she’d fought her way out.’
Babington’s spectacles seemed to gleam with pleasure. ‘Exactly. And the beautiful thing is that nobody’ll be surprised. They’ll just assume we’ve been bloody careless again.’
‘Go on.’
‘German agents - and, believe me, we know there are plenty of them in Alex - hear of the incident. Bodies in British uniform are even picked up next day by bumboatmen who assume quite rightly that they’re from the guardship.’
‘You can’t fake a body,’ Murray interrupted. ‘Where do they come from?’
‘Two of them are Italians from Umberto. Four of ‘em were wounded when we picked her up, and these two -- one of them the captain - obligingly died last night. We also have two prisoners of war who equally obligingly stabbed each other to death in a fight, and the crew of a spotter plane which was shot down near the harbour yesterday.’ Babington smiled. ‘I’ve arranged to have them all put on ice.’
‘And Umberto?’
‘By this time she’ll have been secretly unloaded and will have an additional conning position built near the hand steering in case there’s a hit on the bridge. She’ll also be fitted with steel plates at crucial points and have concrete round the engines. She’ll also have splinter mats and she’ll have been filled with your chaps and their weapons. She heads for Qaba, which is a sensible place to go, of course, because Mersa’s full and it’s on her manifest, anyway.’
Hockold was interested despite his doubts. ‘What about challenges?’ he asked. ‘They’re bound to throw signals at us.’
‘Then you’ll need an Italian-speaking signaller. I know where I can lay my hands on one. Leading hand called Fusco. We’ve used him before. He’ll fend ‘em off with broken signals in plain.’
‘Won’t they be suspicious of plain language?’
‘Not if they think Umberto’s taken a hit on the bridge as she escapes, which killed her master and mate and damaged the code books. We can arrange that they will. Given that, our Italian ought to be able to fox ‘em long enough for you to get alongside.’
Hockold drew a deep breath and Babington smiled, accepting his silence as agreement. ‘They’ll soon know in Qaba that you’re on your way,’ he said, ‘and they’ll be waiting to welcome you home. Since it’s just about two hundred miles as the crow flies, that makes the time-table just about right. Given a diversion by the RAF big enough to keep them busy, they ought to let you in. How does it sound?’
Hockold swallowed. It seemed that an awful lot was having to be taken for granted, but with the time and equipment at their disposal he could see no alternative.
‘I don’t think we’ll come up with anything better,’ he admitted.
7
Training was started at once, and demolition and other experts enlisted.
Every military movement, every feint, every attack, has to have a name. And since the one destined for Qaba could hardly be called ‘Operation to blow up four ships, a warehouse, and a fuel dump’, a title which could soon reach the wrong ears, it had to be coded.
‘Why not call it “Cut-Price”?’ Amos suggested, and after a lot of argument ‘Cut-Price’ it was.
The signallers had arrived at Gott el Scouab at last, and ex-Corporal Curtiss, now a sergeant, was out to show he was the best trainer of signallers in the British army. He blindfolded his men and had them establishing communication without informing them of frequencies; when he was satisfied they could work in the dark, he took them out into the wadis with a breeze lashing the grit against their skins like barbed wire, and, surrounded by escarpments, he made them work like slaves to maintain touch with each other.
Sidebottom had also been promoted sergeant, so that to Bunch’s stream of ‘By the Christs -!’ was added Mo-for-Mohammed’s crazy ‘Iggery! Jildy! Jiloh! Yallah, yallah!’ Several lance-corporals had also been upped and Cobbe’s extra stripe had given great pleasure to Tent 7. ‘Gi’e us a kiss, Corp!’ Waterhouse said warmly.
Cobbe treated the suggestion with the contempt it deserved, strutting up and down in front of them, six-foot-two of bone and stringy muscle, offering the patter on how to scale a wall that he’d learned as a commando.
‘Eight feet high,’ he said, facing a bank of smooth escarpment and talking in a high, strained instructor’s voice, as though someone was clutching him by the throat. ‘You can’t jump it. You can’t fly. You’re not monkeys. So how do you go about it? Easy. You have a little teet-a-teet, which is Frog lingo for getting your ‘eads together, and two of you ‘old your rifles as a mounting block for your pals. A light spring with one foot on it carries you up and over.’
‘With bloody great packs on, Corp?’ Waterhouse asked disbelievingly.
Cobbe gave a tight-lipped smile and turned to the biggest of the Stooges. ‘Cop hold of this rifle, Chamberlain. And see he gets a really good bunk-up so he won’t forget.’
Waterhouse sailed over the escarpment to land on his face, the breath knocked from his body by his pack. ‘You rott
en bugger, Corp,’ he gasped. ‘And there I was, thinkig we was mates.’
Further on, Sergeant Jacka was facing another group whom he was instructing in street fighting. ‘I’m now about to put you through the wringer a little bit,’ he warned. ‘But it’s all in a good cause and at the moment you’re about as much use as a grasshopper’s fart in a gale. We will consider first how to take cover.’
‘A good idea by my reckoning,’ Bradshaw observed quietly.
Jacka agreed. ‘And so it should be,’ he said. ‘All that about dying for your country’s just a load of cock. Much better to make the other bugger die for his. So - if they start shooting at you, what do you do? You find somewhere to get behind, don’t you? A cigarette box’ll do. You’d be surprised how small you can make yourself when some fella’s trying to hit you. Anyone ever done any ju-jitsu?’
Jones the Body, Mr World himself, was pushed forward and, being what he was, he couldn’t resist boasting. ‘Why, aye, I know a bit, all right, Sergeant. It is fit I am, see.’
‘Right,’ Jacka said. ‘Let’s see what you can do to me then. And don’t hold back. I’m not a cream puff.’
Two minutes later, Taffy was being carried away, grey-faced and groaning that he wasn’t ready, and Jacka was staring after him, puzzled. ‘I thought he knew something about it,’ he said.
At the butts they’d set up in one of the wadis, Baragwanath Eva was showing Sergeant Sidebottom what he could do. ‘Five bulls out of five,’ Sidebottom observed. ‘You’re good with a bundook. There’ll be a few black camels turning up if you use that thing right.’
‘Black camels, Sarge?’