by John Harris
For two years the British army had been facing the enemy across this same dusty wasteland, where, mummified by the sun or suffocated by sand, men had died not only of wounds but of loneliness, thirst, starvation and sheer weariness. Now, those who had been at Dunkirk or Norway or Greece or Crete, those war-weary men who’d been chased out of every country almost from the North Pole to the Equator, sensed that this time the Germans were going to do the running for a change.
The evening of 23 October came in quietly and they were all restless as they waited about the camp at Gott el Scouab. That morning they’d been paraded to hear Montgomery’s message read out to them by Hockold in his slow, unemotional voice. It was the usual exhortation to do and die, which they’d all heard before, but somehow this time it seemed different.
As the light began to fade and the desert turned silvery, there was a cold wind blowing from the sea to chafe the gritty dust against the skin. A few of the older hands were quiet and thoughtful, thinking of friends who already lay in the desert, beneath crooked crosses jammed into old petrol tins full of sand or sticking out of piles of snake-infested rocks.
Bradshaw was watching Sugarwhite as he clutched a pencil and pad. He was fulfilling an urgent need to write home to the girl next door. She meant nothing to him, never had and never would, but he couldn’t go into battle, he felt, without putting his thoughts down for someone.
‘How do you feel?’ Bradshaw asked him.
‘Frightened. It’s a big thing, a battle, isn’t it?’
‘It is a bit.’
‘What’s it like?’
‘As far as I can remember, hot, dusty and uncomfortable.’
‘Were you frightened?’
‘Mostly I was just so tired I only wanted to be allowed to go to sleep.’
It didn’t sound too bad and Sugarwhite felt satisfied he’d be able to cope. ‘After all, we’ve been trained for it,’ he said. He was trying to convince himself that the likelihood of survival was good when deep down he wasn’t so sure. ‘We’ve got a good chance, haven’t we? I don’t like to think of being killed.’
Bradshaw considered. ‘So long as they don’t put up memorials to us like they did after the last war, and half-baked intellectual poets don’t write all that bilge about “Friend Death” and “Sweet Death”. I’d much rather read poems to sweet life. I’ve rather enjoyed mine.’
‘But your marriage -’ Sugarwhite was young enough to imagine that love was eternal, a deep romantic attachment consisting of sitting warm and comfortable at opposite sides of the fireplace, interspersed with frequently recurring periods of tremendous sexual passion where you were lifted to unimaginable heights of ecstasy. ‘Will you take her back?’
‘Shouldn’t think so.’ Bradshaw sounded terribly casual. ‘I think next time I’ll just look round for some warm-hearted child and live with her till I’m sure.’
For Sugarwhite, to whom love, even if not sex, was always legal and honest, it was hard to accept.
As zero hour drew nearer and the sky darkened, they noticed that the desert was growing quieter. Despite the vastness, there were always small sounds somewhere -- an unseen lorry’s gears grinding in the distance, the faint growl of a tank, the stutter of a machine gun or the thud of a far-off anti-tank weapon - but now even these small familiar noises were disappearing.
It left them with an uneasy feeling of half-formed anxiety that things might go wrong, that the battle might be lost, that it all might turn out like the last one, so they’d have to run back way beyond their own start line or even to India, that the bloody war might go on for ever and ever till they were all old men.
‘It winnae be that easy,’ Keely said, his dark Scots-Irish face worried. ‘There innae ony flies on Jerry.’
‘He is lying doggo just, to let us know he knows,’ Taffy Jones agreed uneasily.
With the rising of the moon Tenth Corps, which was to support Thirtieth Corps in punching the hole in the German line, began to move up to its start line, and an endless stream of vehicles began to rumble by. The coating of dust on the faces of the men inside and the impassive expressions they wore made them look as if they were wearing masks. Then, as the moon climbed higher into the sky - bloated and florid - all movement stopped and they experienced the strange sensation of the whole desert holding its breath. In the distance they could hear the drone of aircraft over the enemy’s forward positions, but over many hundreds of miles there was unbroken silence as though they hung in space. It was an illusion. The desert contained thousands of men, all within a short distance of each other, all armed to the teeth. They had been there all day, lying in holes in the ground, roasted by the sun and tormented by the flies, forbidden to move for any purpose whatsoever. Only as the sun had disappeared in its crimson fury behind the German lines had they climbed out, and now, with the stars like a million lamps in the sky, they were forming up with creaking equipment in sections and platoons and companies, and beginning to look at their watches.
The moon was high now, serene, illuminating the desert with a blue light. In the artillery gun pits, the order ‘Take Post’ had been given. The weapons were loaded and the layers had set their drift scales and range readers to the charge settings. The shells had been rammed home. Only an occasional Very light or a burst of fire from a light weapon broke the stillness. Outside Tent 7 they began to look at their watches.
‘Nothing can stop it now,’ Bradshaw said in a flat voice. ‘The guns are placed, the tanks ready, even the empty beds in the hospitals back in the Delta.’
Taffy looked at him. ‘You have got the wind up, Oxshott, man?’ For a moment he was hoping in his misery that he had found someone with whom he could share his fears.
Bradshaw shook his head. ‘Oh, God, no,’ he said, unaware of Taffy’s torment. ‘I’m as bloodthirsty as the next man. It’s just the thought that any moment now several thousand lives are going to be cut off - just like that.’ He snapped his fingers. ‘Quite deliberately. Ours and theirs.’
There was another silence. Sergeant Bunch, who could remember the big attacks of the First War, recalled how quiet it had been at Cambrai before zero hour. To Hockold, waiting in a forward gun position in the white moonlight, the silence came almost as a shock. Not a gun nor a rifle fired. The seconds ticked on. He had never heard such a silence before.
‘It’s too bloody still,’ an officer nearby said uneasily. ‘It’ll give the game away.’
A battery commander further back had obviously had the same thought and there was a series of sharp staccato cracks and the rush and whirr of shells going over.
‘Six-pounders,’ someone said. ‘That’ll make ‘em think. Solid shot bouncing around in their trenches.’
At Gott el Scouab the minutes continued to tick by. They looked at their watches again.
‘Now,’ D’ocwra said.
‘No.’ Taffy shook his head. ‘A bit longer, look you.’
He had just worked out the time and raised his head to inform them when the whole sky turned pink. For a moment the silence held, then the noise of the guns hit them in a solid wall of sound that shook the desert and split the sky in two.
It hadn’t the volcanic horror of the First War barrages, but there was a clamorous quality about it that they knew they would never forget, a strange assurance, a certainty that was irresistible, and they stood with their mouths open, entranced by the spectacle, their ears assailed by the violence, their minds awed by the racket and by the incredible confidence that seemed inherent in the din. To north and south the flickering lightning flashes played, fluttering round them, it seemed, like huge moths.
‘Over a thousand guns, man,’ Taffy said exultantly. ‘All calibres. One every twelve yards.’
As nearby batteries he hadn’t even suspected crashed out, Hockold flinched, watching the whole front sparkling with light. The night was seared with flame, convulsing the horizon with a ceaseless glare. Then he heard the clear-cut nonchalant bark of a German 88 in the maelstrom of sound, and
saw the metallic spitting of machine-gun fire. There seemed to be little reaction from the Germans, just an occasional explosion as though an odd gun had got off a single round before it had been obliterated, and by now whole squadrons of aeroplanes were going over so that the sky was resonant with throbbing. The din was heartening and Hockold listened with a thumping heart.
A deep glow on the horizon marked the end of an Axis gun position, then there was a pause as the artillery switched targets and he knew that the infantry had begun to move forward. In. the distance he could see the periodic bursts of a Bofors marking the line of advance with tracer shell, and the beams of searchlights directed towards the sky as beacons, then somewhere in the darkness a voice called out. ‘Charge Two! Zero-three degrees two-oh minutes! Four-eight-oh-oh! Fire by order, five rounds gunfire! B troop, fire!’
As the battery crashed out, he saw waiting officers and orderlies trying to shelter from the concussion, then he heard the thin wail of bagpipes and saw line upon line of steel-helmeted figures in shorts and shirts moving up, their rifles at the high port, the moon glinting on their bayonets, and heard the chafing clink of tanks lurching warily forward.
As the bitter pre-dawn wind faded and the sun came up the next morning, the blue of the western horizon was blurred by smoke and dust and there was a strange reek of cordite in the air. When Hockold appeared by car in a cloud of dust, Murdoch was standing in the doorway of the signals tent, and he could hear the radio bleeping. ‘They reckon the Jocks have gained all their objectives and there’s no sign of a counter-attack,’ he said.
As he spoke, the guns, which had slackened during the night, started up again with sharp salvoes. Groups of British bombers escorted by fighters were sailing overhead and a few dog-fights started away in the distance beyond the German lines, with occasional rattles of firing and the long deepening drones of diving aircraft. The desert, which had been empty for so much of their stay at Gott el Scouab, was filled with vehicles now. There were more batches moving up behind them so that the route past the camp, normally gritty gravel, was powdered by the moving wheels to a substance as soft and fine as dry cement which lifted about the streams of vehicles in great man-made clouds.
Everywhere you looked the desert was crammed with humanity. Convoy after convoy rumbling past with whining tyres, sand-coloured and drab. Lumbering armour, making a tremendous din with their engines and tracks, their guns jerking and lifting, their antennae whipping as they lurched over the jolts. And battery upon battery of guns, light and heavy, rolling past on portees or towed by lorries; all served by men in the areas behind, who pulled out piles of shining shells from beneath their draping of camouflage netting.
That night Hockold held his last conferences with Babington and the RAF. Then, back at Gott el Scouab, he called the officers together and went over the whole thing once more.
‘Warehouse party,’ he warned. ‘Avoid the alleys. There are dozens leading into Wogtown and all you’ll do is get lost. And if anybody’s in doubt who’s opposite, shout for the password. It’s “War Weapons Week, Weymouth”. The Italians don’t have a W in their alphabet and Germans pronounce it as a V, so neither of them should be able to imitate it.’
The last day was tense. As the sun rose a few men appeared and shaved; - then, as the morning advanced, the tent walls were rolled up and the interiors cleared of the rubbish turned out of pockets the night before. Kits were stacked and the piles marked. There was a spate of letter-writing, and a few torn sheets of paper and discarded photographs fluttered about. Automatically they arranged bedding but there was no inspection. A few chores were performed and after breakfast they lay in the shade of the tents, reading, smoking, sipping water from the chattees and gazing towards the west where the rumble of battle continued.
‘I wouldn’t mind a swim,’ Sugarwhite said.
‘You’ll p’r’aps get all the swibbig you wadt toborrow night,’ Waterhouse bawled.
The day was a Sunday and, to everybody’s disgust, Bunch came down on the tents like an avenging angel to drive them out to a church parade.
‘ ‘Oo wadts to go to church?’ Waterhouse yelled. ‘Kneelig down there grousig to some bloke you cand’t see.’
But Bunch, as usual, was way ahead of them when it came to tactics. ‘God’ll like you better for it,’ he announced. ‘And where you’re going it might be a good idea to ‘ave ‘Im on your side.’
At midday, Murdoch got them round him for his last pep talk. ‘No bunching,’ he urged. ‘No rushing. Just keep y’r heads and don’t do anything blindly. Don’t shoot unless you have to. It’ll only draw attention to where you are.’
They were only small points but it was good to hear them, and made them realize that Murdoch had thought of everything and left nothing to chance.
He glanced at his notebook, not because he didn’t know what followed, but to give them time to absorb the things he’d already told them. Then he went on again in his quiet, steady, unemotional voice, as if he were announcing plans to take a troop of Boy Scouts on a camping holiday. ‘If you have to send a message, use a proper form, no’ a scruffy bit of paper. And just make sure you’re no’ in need of a pee when you land. We cannae have everybody stopping for that just when he’s needed.’
Hockold stood behind him, listening, envious that somehow in his own murderous way Murdoch had done what he himself could never do, and had captured the imagination of the men around him. With his own limitations of personality, and with time short so that the preparations and the demands he had had to make had kept him away from contact with them, it had always been Murdoch’s personality which had impressed them most. Perhaps, he thought calmly, it was as well; and right that his own share in Cut-Price was to be no more than taking the brunt of the German counter-attacks so that the other parties were free to do their jobs. Only the night before he had experienced another of the unnerving blank spots when he could see nothing but the sprawled body among the wreckage, clawing at its wounded head.
Beyond the camp there was still the grind and rattle of tanks moving, and the low sustained roar of lorry engines as they headed westwards. There was little information on the general situation, but someone brought the news that the Germans were resisting strongly and that the Greeks had caught a nasty packet in a feint down by Hemeimet.
‘Wops, see.’ Taffy, of course, knew the reason why. ‘They cannot fight.’
‘Modem war being what it is, however,’ Bradshaw pointed out cheerfully, ‘those who aren’t naturally heroic are sometimes obliged to become so, while those who are likely to thrill to the sound of the charge are all too often left guarding the bogs. You can’t always pick your spot.’
A little later the word was that the Free French had caught a packet too. Nobody knew how such news got around the desert but it always did and no one doubted that it was true.
Sugarwhite looked anxious. ‘I hope this one doesn’t end up like all the others,’ he said,
‘It wod’t,’ Waterhouse reassured him. ‘Not this time.’
‘Suppose we win it, boy?’ Taffy was doing a big planning job for the future. ‘What will you do with the peace? What will be the first thing you will do when it is all over and we can all go home.’
Waterhouse looked at him with contempt. ‘You know the adswer to that as well as I do: Go upstairs with the girl friend. And then take me pack off.’
Somebody noticed that Sidi-Bot-Om, old Mo-for-Mohammed, was reading an Everyman edition of the Koran.
‘What’s that, Sarge?’ Belcher asked.
‘It’s a bit like Kipling, son,’ Sidebottom said gravely. ‘Only more holy.’
Even Bunch found himself suddenly popular with nervous youngsters who hoped that from his vast store of knowledge he could produce something reassuring. ‘J’ever see a cavalry charge?’ he said. ‘I did. Last there was. On the Somme. Ten minutes later they was all lying dead.’
‘The men, Sarge?’
Bunch’s dim honest face stirred. ‘Oh, yes,’ he sa
id. ‘They was killed too.’
They brewed tea, making it in cans in the old desert way, independent of Cook-Corporal Rogers. A few names came in of men of their old units who were said to have been wounded or killed. Once more, nobody knew where they came from but nobody doubted. As the sun began to sink they saw a Boston in the distance hit by anti-aircraft fire and explode, to fall in a thousand fragments away from the rest of the formation as it forged steadily on. A few lorries came back, some of them damaged, some of them containing damaged equipment for repair, some of them damaged men. The sight made them realize that the noise and smoke ahead were not mere histrionics, but the sound and fury of battle.
The day dragged. The lorries continued to pass them going east, and it suddenly occurred to Fidge that he ought to get aboard one, because then he could be in the back areas before anyone missed him.
The sun grew hotter. They tried not to talk about the battle. Belcher got a game of crown and anchor going and everyone seemed willing to lose everything he possessed, as though hoarding money were a temptation to Fate. Sugarwhite tried to finish his letter to the girl next door. Baragwanath Eva cleaned his rifle for the thousandth time, his face placid as though he were looking forward to what lay ahead. Jones the Great Warrior, trying to hide the unease that was filling his mind to bursting point, told them yet again how he was going to win the war. Bradshaw read.
Then, just when they were all beginning to think about preparing themselves for the evening move, a staff car came tearing into the camp, bursting like a bullet out of the streams of traffic grinding past. A moment later, Sotheby was seen running to Hockold’s tent.
A few curious men managed to see the officers arguing inside the headquarters hut. Then the staff officer came out, and as his car swung out of camp, Hockold called for the old Humber brake he used. He climbed into it and drove away, his face angry, heading after the staff car.