Take or Destroy!

by John Harris

  They were still wondering if the lorries would come when Zohler arrived to snatch away the Grant tank he’d given them, the two Honeys, the tankmen, even the shattered Mark III.

  ‘Is it bad?’ Nietzsche asked.

  Zohler pulled a face. ‘Erwin’s anxious,’ he said. ‘But he’s not contemplating a defeat.’

  They were still worried by the news when another signal arrived, snatching away most of the pioneers and every one of their lorries.

  ‘For God’s sake,’ Hrabak stormed. ‘We need them! Is the army being run by zombies?’

  2

  The troops, brought to a high degree of skill, were transported to Alexandria.

  When they learned at Gott el Scouab that they were going after all, they nearly lifted the roof off the desert.

  As Hockold’s car was seen leaving the camp, little groups of men began to drift towards headquarters, all trying to look as though they were doing a job but every one of them waiting to catch the first whiff of griff. They were all aware that Erwin’s Boys were having difficulty hanging on and that a final hard blow now would knock them clean off-balance. His communications ravaged, the sand drifting over the bodies of his dead, Erwin was ripe for a big new attack if one could only be mounted in time. From being brittle and precarious at the beginning, the situation had strengthened and there was a certainty now that victory was in the air. The Mark IVs, feared ever since Gazala, had been smashed to pieces by gunners who, red-eyed with peering and croaking from the heat and the dust, had not given an inch.

  The air was full of speculation. Huge traffic congestions were building up to the north as units swung to newly allotted routes and the armour flowed forward, choking on its own exhaust fumes.

  The dead were laid in their dusty graves, split sandbags replaced, fresh piles of shining shells built behind the guns, and as the scrap iron was towed away to give a clear field of fire, the army prepared itself for the next trial of strength.

  As Murdoch appeared with a sheaf of papers in his hand, Rabbitt began to signal with his arms. ‘Fetch ‘em out!’ he shouted. ‘Fetch ‘em out!’

  Sergeants went down the lines of tents, slapping the slack canvas so that men came running. A few came from the cookhouse and a few from the Naafi, two or three from the latrines, one even from St Martin’s-in-the-Sands where he’d been having a quick grumble to God about the way he was being mucked about. They gathered round Murdoch, eager, curious, their sullenness gone, Rabbitt pushing them into a half-circle.

  Murdoch stepped forward. ‘Listen carefully,’ he said. ‘We’re on our way. There’s a big new attack going in any moment now and we’re to arrive on Jerry’s back doorstep just in time to throw him off-balance. We leave tomorrow at the original time.’

  Taffy Jones heard him in an agony of apprehension, his frantic mind trying to cope with the question of whether he’d be alive or dead when it was all over, whether he’d be whole or maimed for the rest of his days, blind, mad, or fated to spend the rest of his life on his back.

  That evening, because they found they had time on their hands, there was an impromptu concert. It started with someone dragging out his mouth organ and playing all the songs that Vera Lynn and Anne Shelton sang to make homesick swaddies even more homesick and from these, it was only one step to ‘When This Blooming War Is Over’, the old complaint that was as timeless as Corporal Nym and Ancient Pistol - probably even By-the-Christ Bunch. Then Caruso Jones, who had made a bob or two in the past singing in pubs and clubs, announced that he was going to give them ‘Ave Maria’. His thoughts were rushing about in his mind like demented mice and he had to do something to stop them; being a Welshman, singing was the first thing that occurred to him.

  ‘In its original Italian,’ he explained.

  ‘I thought the original was Latin,’ Bradshaw said.

  ‘Oh, is it, bach?’ Jones stared at him, for once unwilling to take up the cudgels. ‘Well, it makes no difference, see. I was going to make it up as I went along.’

  Waterhouse, who possessed a tenor that was high enough to crack glasses, tried to get in with a few musical comedy favourites, but when he started on ‘The Desert Song’, he got no further than ‘. . . sad kissig a boodlit sky . . .’ when a great howl of derision stopped him dead and he had to change to the infamous ballad everybody knew about King Farouk and his queen.

  ‘Quais ketir, King Farouk,

  Let the swaddies have a look . . .’

  The Welsh sang ‘Sospan Bach’, as they always did, as if they were all professionals and had been rehearsing it for months. And as a grand finale, Auchmuty produced a set of pipes from somewhere and gave them a selection that set their blood stirring, whether they came from Inverness or Cardiff or even Bognor Regis.

  As they went to their tents, the air seemed to be charged with emotion, a sense of loneliness but of grim determination too. Beyond the horizon men were dying to bring the war in Africa to an end, and in most of them there was a clear willingness to be part of it. They were all sick of the war. The whole world was sick of the war and anything that would bring its end nearer was worth chancing your arm for.

  The next day they rose at leisure, sluggishly, like drugged bees. Nobody was talking much; they’d done all their talking long since. They put their kits and equipment together quietly, while worried officers checked their lists, and harassed sergeants made sure everybody had what he ought to have. The guns were still rumbling in the distance and they were all a little subdued and preoccupied.

  At midday Hockold went over the whole thing with them again, hoping to God he wasn’t boring them. But their faces were tense and earnest and they appeared to be taking it all in. By this time they were all dead serious. Leg-pulling had stopped, comments were sober, and he tried to match their mood.

  Unable to hold back his enthusiasm, Cook-Corporal Rogers had given them bacon and eggs for breakfast, though the bacon was tinned and the eggs were Egyptian and no bigger than marbles. At lunchtime he went mad with stew and ginger pud with gyppo, so that they were all in a good mood, laughing and eating at the tops of their voices. During the afternoon they lay and smoked and talked, listening to the rumble in the west. Then, because of the possibility of infection, they changed into clean shirts, socks and underwear; and, to make the dressing of face wounds easier, shaved carefully.

  ‘Anybody got a spare blade?’ Bradshaw asked.

  Sugarwhite fished in his pack. A strange affinity had grown up between them, because Sugarwhite considered Bradshaw the most experienced and educated man he’d ever met and because Bradshaw needed Sugarwhite’s innocence to combat his own cynicism.

  ‘ ‘E’s going to castrate Taffy,’ Waterhouse said. ‘So ‘e can’t go out stoating no more.’ He grinned up at the Welshman, aware like all of them that his bluff had been called at last. ‘There must be birds all the way from Lad’s Edd to Johd o’ Groats, weeping and wailing and gnashing their teeth because you’ve sent ‘em ‘urtling down the slippery slope.’

  Fidge was still anxiously watching the horizon for lorries heading east, but there were no lorries in sight at all now and he began to admit to himself that he’d left it too late. ‘Do yow think the battle’s owver?’ he asked.

  ‘No,’ Belcher said. ‘They’re keeping it goin’ till you get there.’

  Fidge glared. ‘Oi down’t think that’s foony,’ he growled.

  Then someone noticed that Sidi-Bot-Om was busier than usual over his Koran and, with a feeling that even if he were put on a charge it couldn’t hurt much more than where he was going, Waterhouse dared to pull his leg.

  ‘Must be a bit of all right being a Bohammedad, Sarge,’ he said. ‘All them wives.’

  ‘Polygamy’s largely a myth, son,’ Sidebottom answered quietly, his crazy eyes not blinking. ‘Not pukka. Designed to discredit the Faith.’

  ‘Wouldn’t mind that part all the same. All them birds. You ‘eard that one about the ‘arem?’

  And Waterhouse began to recite at the top of hi
s voice, as he did everything else, even eating and sleeping.

  ‘It was Ghristbas day in the ‘arem,

  The euduchs were stood by the walls,

  When in strode the bold bad sultan

  And gazed at ‘is marble ‘alls.

  “What would you like for Christbas, boys,” ‘e yelled,

  Ad the euduchs answered “Balls”.’

  When the whistles went and the lorries began to arrive, they collected in groups, dressed with as much care as debutantes at their first parties, Waterhouse as outrageous, uproarious and cheerfully indifferent as ever to the solemnity of the occasion.

  ‘I feel as done up as a bowl of rabbit stew,’ he said.

  ‘All dressed up, look you - ‘ Taffy bared his teeth in a grimace ‘ - and nowhere to go.’

  They gathered under their officers and NCOs. Khaki drill trousers and battledress blouses, Hockold had told them, with headgear of their own choice, but Murdoch had ignored orders and dressed himself in his kilt.

  ‘In full fig,’ Bradshaw said as he hitched his webbing on to his shoulders. ‘The men of Waterloo and Inkerman. When the last strap is in place and the last buckle tightened, eyeballs will not protrude more than one and a half inches from the head.’

  He watched Taffy fastening his buckles with unsteady fingers, aware with his shrewd intellect how he felt. His voice became gentle. ‘And the Man of Harlech himself,’ he said. ‘Contriving as usual to appear the dernier cri even in this witches’ sabbath we’re going to. Gwmru am Byth, Taffy bach. Cwmru am Byth.’

  Taffy turned. Bradshaw had always puzzled him but this time he was glad of the friendly tone of his voice. ‘Yes,’ he said, managing an agonized smile. ‘A clean soldier is a good soldier. Cwmru am Byth to you, too, Oxshott.’

  When the whistles went Bradshaw saw him sigh as he picked up his Sten gun and he laid a hand on his shoulder. Taffy’s head turned and for a moment in his eyes there was no boasting, no sign of self-justification, merely a mute gratitude that Bradshaw had shown this brief sign of comradeship. This was the moment when they had to face themselves and discover whether they were as stout-hearted as other men, and he had a miserable feeling that he wasn’t.

  As they gathered by the lorries Fidge stared at the vehicles in sour disgust. The transport towards the east he’d been awaiting for so long had arrived at last. But they were the wrong lorries and he wouldn’t need to scrounge a lift in them; he was being offered one with the compliments of the Eighth Army.

  The breeze coming off the sea was cool as they clambered aboard, the heavily-laden pushed up by their friends. There was a lot of fidgeting with equipment and a lot of nervous coughing. Nobody was saying much and a lot of people seemed to be brooding; even the occasional catcall seemed unfunny and forced.

  They were all aboard at last, carefully segregated into their groups, with Devenish’s men tucked into the middle with their explosives. The men who’d been running the cookhouse and the canteen and the petrol store and the transport section turned out to see them off, standing silently alongside as the last tailgates were jammed into place with a clang. Then Murdoch moved to the leading lorry and waved his arm as he climbed aboard, and the convoy rolled out of camp and began to move east.

  Bang on time.

  3

  Embarkation took place after dark, the ships leaving in the early hours of 30 October.

  In Cairo the evening was warm, so that Hockold’s neck ran and he felt stupidly - unendurably - hot. There was a radio playing somewhere, full of the sentiment that the people at home loved -- ‘Here’s one for Private Dogsbody from his ever-loving wife’ -- and he wondered if Private Dogsbody out in the desert was asking himself bitterly if it were just to keep him happy while his ever-loving wife slipped into bed with a gunner from the 8th Air Force. The tragedy in North Africa, he felt, was growing stale.

  He tried to push his thoughts away. There was no time for the luxury of introspection. He knew he was going to see men die and finally die himself; and since 1940 he’d seen it so often he’d learned to keep his dismay private, a detached thing which could easily be hidden under his normal brusque exterior.

  As his thoughts ran on, he realized his glass was empty and he put it down, reluctantly because in his heart of hearts he had no wish to go. Despite his care, it clattered against the table.

  ‘I must be frightened, Kirstie,’ he said, trying to make a joke of it.

  She followed the pretence and laughed with him, but she had the feeling that he was near the end of his tether, that he’d been living on his nerves too long.

  Hockold’s smile died. He was certain he was looking at her for the last time and was wondering if he could face death with a measure of dignity as he’d seen so many other men face it.

  He looked up to find her eyes on his face. ‘Well,’ he said briskly. ‘This is it. I’ve got to get moving.’

  She nodded. She had said goodbye to so many men in the past eighteen months, there was nothing unusual in the parting. She was showing no excitement or anxiety but inside she was a tumult of unhappiness. Quite by chance in a book she’d been reading in bed the previous night she’d come across a disturbing quotation. ‘A tree with a straight trunk is the first to be chopped down,’ it had said. ‘A well with sweet water is the first to be drawn dry,’ and she knew it meant men like Hockold. Not necessarily the most personable or the most handsome, but always the most honest, truthful and steadfast, who had a sense of rightness and, despite their dread, selflessly believed in living by it.

  She found difficulty in replying to him. ‘Be careful, George,’ she managed.

  ‘I’ll be back, Kirstie.’

  Oh, God, please yes, she prayed. She’d waved off so many men she’d never seen again, it was like having part of herself cut away. Most of them hadn’t meant a thing to her; a few had meant a little; one or two like Hockold, for one reason or another, had meant a lot; but it was always the same.

  Hockold was hitching at his belt now. She handed him his cap, studying him unhappily. This is an odd pair of boots, she’d decided the first time they’d met, but she’d learned since that behind this lean, dour-faced North Countryman with the beak nose, who didn’t always seem to be listening to what she said, whose eyes seemed always to be seeking out infinite distances because he’d lived with them so long, was a much finer man than anyone gave him credit for. She’d heard what people had said of him -- ‘Poor as a church-mouse,’ ‘Stiff as a yard-broom,’ ‘A good lead-horse, no more’ -- but there was more to him than that; more, very often, than there was to the men who criticized him. Behind that strong resolute face there was a curious Puritan concept of duty which was the key to his character. Standing up in front of men, leading them, telling them what to do, was as unnatural to a man of his modesty as flying. Yet he conceived it to be what he had to do and did it, if without brilliance, at least well.

  He was fumbling with his cap. ‘So long, Kirstie,’ he said.

  ‘So long, George. I’ll have a long cold drink waiting for you when you come back.’

  He hesitated, frowning and wondering what to say. Then, on an impulse, she kissed him full on the mouth. He smiled and, to her surprise, grabbed her shoulders and kissed her back.

  Then he was gone, and she was standing alone, her hands at her sides, staring at the blank door, wondering if she’d meant it or whether it was just another of the unstable excesses of emotion people who stayed behind felt when decent, kind, honourable men went off to the war probably never to return.

  Babington was waiting near the dock gates when Hockold arrived.

  ‘Bit of trouble,’ he said immediately. ‘The skipper of the leading Fairmile’s been whipped off to hospital with galloping appendicitis. Seems he’s been hanging on for three days in the hope that we’d go but it was just too much today and he had to report sick. They’ve already operated.’

  Hockold’s mind was still full of Kirstie and he had to force himself to concentrate. ‘Will that cause problems?’
he asked.

  ‘Not really. We’ve just moved ‘em round. The skipper of 146 has been briefed what to do. He’ll be able to handle it.’

  Hockold nodded and Babington went on enthusiastically. ‘I have a man with a car to guide your vehicles to the debussing point. Hot soup’s laid on in a godown there with bully beef, pickles and a few things like that. They’ll be glad of a bite before they go on board.’

  The moon was out and by its faint grey light Hockold watched the men falling into groups, every one of them laden like a Christmas tree. There was no talking. They did it quickly and without orders. Then, faintly, Hockold heard Bunch’s voice.

  ‘97 Commando, atte-en-shun! Le-eft - turn! By the Christ -!’

  Then Hockold knew that this was something Murdoch, Amos, Rabbitt and the sergeants had cooked up between them -- a tribute to him or a tribute to the men, it didn’t matter which - and as the leading files swung past him, heading towards the water, and he came to attention, every head clicked round.

  They were actually enjoying it, Hockold thought, marching with a precision that would have made a chorus line look silly, moving as one man, swinging their free arms to shoulder level, fingers clenched, thumbs flat, hands down at the wrist to make a straight line, really feeling they were someone. The army was a funny institution. Composed chiefly of tough, hard-boiled soldiers not given to emotion, it still had a gift of moving a man and he found himself very close to tears.

  There were no lights on in the warehouse where the navy had set up tables with dixies of tea and great iron pots of soup; just one or two hurricane lamps to give a ghostly look to the line of men filing past.

  ‘Keep your voices down, lads,’ Rabbitt was saying quietly as he moved among the muttering groups. ‘And take your time.’