by John Harris
Hockold smiled. ‘I’ll be glad to have them,’ he said. ‘But your sub-lieutenant can’t blow four ships at once. The RAF stays in charge.’
‘This is a naval operation.’
‘It’s a combined operation.’
‘Oh, well-’
‘Don’t back away, Babington,’ Hockold said sharply. ‘I want your party. I want anybody I can get.’
‘Funny you should say that,’ Babington mused. ‘Because I’ve got this American as well: Captain Cornelius H. Cadish. Nice chap. Been sent here to learn. He has twenty men he could bring along too.’
‘No special terms of reference,’ Hockold said shortly. ‘They do what everybody else does.’
‘I’ll put it to him.’ Babington looked up. ‘About the minefield at Qaba: you were right. There isn’t one. The gap’s wide open. I shall have the chart in front of me when we go in.’
Hockold stared. ‘Are you going?’
‘As you said --’ Babington’s face cracked into a grin ‘- this is a combined operation and, if we’re going to have a nice little nocturnal jolly ashore, I might as well look after the seaborne end.’
8
The men were hardened in the desert by rigorous training under expert instructors.
The defences of Qaba had taken a turn for the better and Colonel Hochstatter was feeling much happier.
Headquarters had suddenly gone mad. Balloon equipment, searchlights and light and heavy flak had been ordered up and, in addition to Zohler’s damaged Mark III, two captured British Honeys and a damaged Grant had been sent to the town. Since the Honeys were too light for the Western Desert and the Grant had its gun mounted in a side sponson, it was thought they might be of more use to Hochstatter than they would to the panzers. Finally, two 75 PAK 97/38 guns arrived.
Schoeler eyed them without much enthusiasm. ‘They might have sent us something better,’ he complained. ‘They’re only French 75s on German carriages. They’re hard to handle and they’re unstable when they’re firing.’
Nevertheless, they were better than nothing, and he found sites for them behind the POW compound on the Ibrahimiya side of the town and alongside the searchlight at Mas el Bub. And when two further 47s and two captured two-pounders arrived, he began to change his tune as he realized he was beginning to build up quite a formidable battery.
‘If we’re not careful,’ he said, ‘they’ll be pressing Panzer-jägers on us.’
This wasn’t all either, because there had been a signal to the effect that eight hundred men from a Pionier-Lehrbataillon on their way from Tobruk were due to pass through the town with all their transport and were to be held for harbour defence until further notice. It was quite clear army headquarters was growing concerned about the coming British attack, and the whole of the rear area was being showered with demands to clear the line and get things moving before it started. Hochstatter had heard, in fact, that all was not as well with the Afrika Korps as appeared on the surface. Thanks to the RAF and the Royal Navy, which regularly intercepted stores and reinforcements from Europe, units were under strength, and it was well known that water supplies in the forward areas were now considered to be critical. There were even alarming rumours that the fighting troops were undernourished and that the sickness rate was rising, while the British, always well supported, were growing stronger every day.
It was a disturbing situation, and Hochstatter knew that General Stumme had made a depressing report to Berlin on his position and the bitterness that existed between the panzers and the Luftwaffe. It was obviously essential that Hochstatter’s supplies should be set in motion as quickly as possible but all Hrabak could do was seize the lorries which dragged in the guns, and organize parties of men to push drums on handcarts, and Arabs with camels to haul them on sledge-like constructions of poles. His conscripted engineers, sailors, convalescents, artillerymen, pioneers and Italians began to wish they’d never seen North Africa. It was hot and dusty and some of them were even beginning to loathe their beloved leaders who had brought them there.
None more than that homesick skiver, Private Gaspare Bontempelli. He was sick of the war, sicker still of Qaba, and sickest of all of the Germans for giving all the dirty jobs to the Italians. People like himself from Naples were used to going hungry, but gracefully and to the accompaniment of music and beauty; not, as in Qaba, to the Germanic shouts of Sottotenente Baldissera, a dedicated Fascist who tried hard to model himself on the brisk young men of the Afrika Korps, and Unteroffizier Upholz who, despite his lower rank, had the power to tell even Baldissera what to do.
Bontempelli sighed. There had been a time earlier in the year when he’d thought it was all coming to an end as the British had bolted back from Gazala, and they had moved up through deserted British camps towards Cairo. The windscreens had flashed in the sun as they’d dropped down from Sollum, already visualizing waving palms and water and green meadows, and the unlimited lust to which they were entitled as conquerors at the expense of terrified Egyptian women. They had joked of having harems and being appointed governor of Heliopolis, but when they’d stopped the only thing that had interested them was to fling off their clothes and rush stark naked into the indigo Mediterranean. Cairo could wait a day or two longer.
Unfortunately, Cairo was still waiting. Rommel had tried to outflank the British, but his favourite trick hadn’t come off for once and they had come to a stop. Now the Eighth Army was supposed to be receiving reinforcements, and instead of the luxury and lust, they’d got only the burning sand of Qaba, itching skins, sores, dysentery and jaundice.
Bontempelli stared with reddened eyes at the four ships in the glittering little harbour. Then a butterfly landed on the drum he’d been pushing, and as it palpitated there it reminded him somehow of the white body of Maddalena Corri in Taranto and how he’d seen her shuddering with suppressed excitement as she’d waited for him to make love to her. He drew a deep painful breath, stifled by his own erotic thoughts, and forced her out of his mind. It was time he went to see Zulfica Ifzi again.
Zulfica Ifzi lived in the Borgo Nero among the close-huddled houses of whitewashed mud-brick, and even if she weren’t as beautiful or as fragile as the lost Maddalena, at least she was hot-blooded and moved well in bed. Because Qaba had been occupied by the British for so long, her sole conversation at first had been ‘Hello, Angleesh swaddy! No spikka other bints,’ but she was young enough to learn and had the Eastern habit of oiling her body with perfumed unguents which made contact with her all the more exciting.
Bontempelli shuddered and shook his head as he tried to force the picture from his mind. ‘Maria, Madre di Gesu,’ he murmured agonizedly. ‘Preserve us all.’
Then he became aware of Unteroffizier Upholz staring at him from the door of the hut where he had his office, and as he returned to the ship, Sottotenente Baldissera appeared in front of him, small, strutting, his hands on his hips, his arms akimbo, his jaw with its neatly combed Balbo beard thrust forward in the style of Mussolini.
‘Daydreaming again, Double Ration?’ he asked.
‘Si, Signor Sottotenente,’ Bontempelli admitted. ‘Un poco.’
‘What about?’
‘Women, Signor Sottotenente.’
Baldissera’s adam’s apple worked because it was something he often dreamed about himself. ‘Then don’t, ragazzo mio,’ he said. ‘The Germans are watching.’
The position was surprisingly similar at Gott el Scouab where quite a few of the Cut-Price Commandos were beginning to regret their hasty decision to volunteer.
Their life was still dominated by the fierce influence of the sun. Every day they saw it rise from under the eastern rim of the desert and, growing rapidly in heat and light, climb its course across the glaring sky. Cut off from the rest of the army, they knew only hard work, the emptiness of the desert - and the flies. Because the Italian prisoners had never been careful with the disposal of their rubbish, there were millions of them at Gott el Scouab, enjoying the moisture in human sweat a
nd swarming round the ears, nose and mouth. Desert sores drew them like magnets, and whenever food was put down they arrived in their squadrons and brigades and divisions for first bite.
‘They’ve got no bloody discretion,’ Belcher complained bitterly. ‘Gettin’ in a man’s tinned fruit like that. I thought the bastard was a raisin and there it was - ett!’
A few fights enlivened the proceedings. On one memorable occasion even the Three Stooges set about each other, bringing down four tents in their titanic struggles until someone thought of By who incredibly managed to hold three large and very angry young men at arm’s length in his great fists at once.
‘Once round By,’ Belcher said, ‘twice round the gasworks.’
One pleasure was football which Murdoch encouraged as a means of keeping them fit. The sergeants played the corporals and the corporals played the privates who, being more numerous, had four teams. The camp cooks had a team, too, picked by Cook-Corporal Rogers, but like all cooks they were too fat and couldn’t run. They lost by forty-three to nil to Privates 4, which was captained by Jones the Body who claimed to have had a trial for Cardiff City before the war. Triumphantly, he threw out a challenge to the officers, so that everybody could laugh when they made fools of themselves; but Murdoch played as if he’d been capped for Scotland and they beat Privates 4 easily, chiefly due to the efforts of Second-Lieutenant Sotheby who, despite his stammer and nervous appearance, turned out to be a born footballer and ran rings round Taffy Jones to score seven goals.
As they lay in their tents, docile, cantankerous, suspicious, swapping grievances and jokes, they tried to remember what it was like to be cold and miserable instead of hot and miserable.
‘When we was on Salisbury Plain,’ Belcher said, ‘we used to share a hut wiv about eight hundred rats. How the poor fings survived the cold and damp, I dunno. It was lovely.’
‘I wish I was ‘obe,’ Waterhouse wailed in mock woe. ‘Stuck out ‘ere, I feel like a bloke who’s bird’s dropped ‘im. Slung away like the paper after she’s fidished ‘er fish ad chips.’
‘Actually - ‘ Bradshaw lifted his head ‘- you’re better off out here with Monty than you realize.’
‘Well -’ Waterhouse spoke grudgingly ‘- I suppose Monty’s a good gederal.’
‘Wavell was a good general, too,’ Sugarwhite said gravely, and Waterhouse burst into song at once : “ ‘But dow ‘e contemplates his navel-’ “
Bradshaw let them sort out who was the best general, then he mildly brought them back to the point. ‘Actually, I wasn’t talking about the army.’ It stopped them dead.
Waterhouse turned. ‘Well, what was you talkig about?’
‘This place.’
‘It’s the bloody sand that gets me dowd.’
‘Actually,’ Bradshaw said, ‘the sand’s mostly dust.’
‘I suppose you know a lot about it, don’t you?’ Taffy said aggressively.
‘Yes,’ Bradshaw agreed. ‘I was in the gallop up to Gazala and back.’
That stopped the argument dead again because Bradshaw had allowed them to think he was a newcomer like the rest of them.
Taffy was the first to recover. ‘I was nearly in that, look you.’
Baragwanath Eva turned. ‘You was never, you gert liar.’
‘I was. Mad I was when I missed it. What was it like being up in the blue?’
‘Marvellous. No one else but us and the Germans.’
‘And the bloody flies,’ Waterhouse yelped. ‘The flies, the sand, the ‘eat and the ‘ard tack!’
‘What’s wrong with that?’ Bradshaw asked. ‘I’ve never found the desert a scene of fretful discontent and disillusion, have you?
And if you have to make war, where better? Any man who’s been part of this army will sit back in his old age and say, “I was one of God’s chosen few.” ‘
The thought gave them a measure of consolation as Murdoch drove them. It was exhausting work in the extremes of temperature but he never let up, drumming advice into them until their brains hung limp between their ears. The sergeants also never let up. The training went on all day, humping weapons and ammunition, running under the blazing sun, their shirts dark with sweat, dropping flat in the dust, getting up and running again. They shed weight by the pound.
‘I think the idea’s to dehydrate us,’ Bradshaw observed solemnly. ‘So they can shovel us into the sea from aeroplanes -- whereupon we swell up and become soldiers again. A whole regiment landed behind the German lines in a brown paper bag.’
Once a ‘shufti-wallah’ came over, droning stridently from the west to look for the Eighth Army. But it was a long time since the Luftwaffe had dominated desert airspace and five Hurricanes dropped on to its tail immediately. For a while, the machines moved about against the blue sky like a lot of flies, and they could hear the bursts of firing as the German streaked for safety. Then one of the Hurricanes slipped into position and the ‘shufti-wallah’ faltered, lost altitude, and with a deepening howl, nose-dived into the ground beyond the ridges a mile from camp. They all heard the crash and saw the pink and yellow mushroom of smoke, flame and sand blossom upwards.
‘Better send a section over,’ Captain Watson said flatly to Bunch in the silence that followed. ‘Somebody might have escaped.’
He didn’t sound very hopeful and all they found were a few charred hands and feet.
Of necessity, their amusements were simple and it was Auchmuty - inevitably Auchmuty, the solitary, silent ex-shepherd -who discovered that among the camelthorn that surrounded them there was a surprising amount of animal life. Jerboas warrened the ground in the gravelly patches. Insects abounded : white-shelled snails, large long-legged ants, and revolting black dung beetles which lived on animal droppings and could always be heard scrambling around in the area of the latrines. There was also a picturesque but sinister selection of sand spiders, tarantulas and scorpions, and scorpion-baiting became a minor sport.
In addition to these pastimes, they could always smoke, drink tea or sing; for a treat they could even take their boots off and think about women. Not much, though, because the desert made them as sterile as itself, and sexual appetites disappeared - something that worried Captain Watson, whose marriage was so far bounded entirely by two days and two nights.
Only Kiss of Death Jones, the Hearts and Flowers Kid, bothered to dwell on the subject. ‘A kiss, look you,’ he pointed out, ‘is only an application at the top of the building for a job in the basement.’
Sugarwhite’s ears flapped. Though Taffy didn’t know it, in Sugarwhite he had the best listener in the tent, because inside the ‘Cut-Price Commando card’ there was still an uncertain boy determined that if he ever got back to civilization again he’d go for the first sizeable skirt he saw. To the experienced, Taffy’s claims always had a hollow ring and his talk meant only that for some reason of his own he needed to put himself across to them, but the fact that in less enlightened days he would have had his ears cropped for his lies made no difference to Sugarwhite. To him, Taffy was the Minstrel Boy himself, the Man of Harlech, Owen Glendower and the red dragon of Welsh Wales all rolled into one for his skill with women. Sugarwhite had been brooding for months on the disaster of his overseas leave when, feeling he might die in battle without ever having experienced physical love, he’d tramped unsuccessfully for hours round London looking for a willing girl.
‘The left one,’ Taffy was continuing with the sureness of an expert. ‘And there’s a state she will be in, boy, because that is where her heart is, see.’
Bradshaw, who had been trying against odds to read, lifted his head from his book and interrupted the diatribe in a bored voice. ‘I always thought your heart was in the centre,’ he said. ‘And since a woman’s ticker’s made of untreated granite, anyway, massaging her mammary glands isn’t likely to stir a virgin’s passions to the point when she gives away what she prizes above rubies.’
Taffy’s open mouth shut with a click. Bradshaw always seemed to interrupt him with a di
sputatious comment just when he was at full throttle, and usually in words he couldn’t understand. Since he was only too well aware of his own failings, he was .certain Bradshaw did it deliberately, and he’d often considered taking refuge in the last extremity of offering to go outside with him to settle their disagreements with fists like the Stooges. Despite his bulging muscles, however, Taffy was unsure of his courage and there was a strange quiet self-confidence about Bradshaw.
‘There is ignorant for you,’ he said indignantly, smoothing his hair and turning to less imaginative listeners. ‘I am not Tyrone Power but I do not have to wear a sack over my head to warn the girls I am coming.’
‘I rackon they gurls disappear like rabbits down a ‘ole when ‘ee appears, me dear,’ Eva growled. ‘I would, was I a gurl. ‘Tes nothin’ but wind and piss you are. I ‘ad a ferret once just like you, but I never did breed from the mucky toad. ‘Twas useless ‘e was.’
Taffy jeered. ‘Maybe it is jealous you are because you do not have any success.’ He turned hurriedly to the undemanding Sugarwhite. ‘What I always do, look you, is get them with their left arm behind their back and hold their right under my left -’
‘But that’s rape,’ Sugarwhite protested.
‘Or else a thumping great fib,’ Bradshaw said. ‘I bet all he’s ever done is tried not very successfully to roger some poor bloody barmaid against the railings one night when she’d had a few gins over the Plimsoll Line after the local eisteddfod.’
‘I know what I am talking about,’ Taffy said furiously.
‘I doubt it,’ Bradshaw said. ‘Most of the time you talk the most blistering balls. You know what the Good Book says : Pe llefarwn a thafodau dynion ac angylion a heb gennyf gariad yr wyf fel efyddyn seinio neu symbalyn tincian.’
Taffy’s jaw dropped. ‘That’s Welsh,’ he said.
Bradshaw smiled. ‘Yes. And you’ll perhaps know what it means? It means, “Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, and have not charity, I am become as sounding brass or a tinkling cymbal.” First Corinthians, Thirteen, verse one.’