by John Harris
There was surprisingly little talk. Most of them just ate and drank, and when they’d finished Rabbitt got them into lines. They shuffled to silence and Hockold moved into the centre of the hollow square they’d formed.
‘A few last tips,’ he said. ‘When you arrive, spread out quickly. And keep it quiet. Above all, try to imagine what it’s going to be like for the other side. They’re not going to realize what’s happening until they hear the first bangs. They’re going to be scared stiff.’
They stared back at him soberly. He was just like the rest of them, hung about with binoculars, map case and ammunition, with a Sten gun under his arm. He’d said more than once that he expected the officers to do as much of the dirty work as the men.
They were just about to start moving the tanks on board the landing craft when Murdoch appeared, driving Hockold’s ancient Humber brake on first.
‘Room for one more?’ he asked, relaxed and grinning as they’d never seen him before.
The tanks lurched over the ramp, Sergeant Gleeson knocking a great dent in the brake as he edged his vehicle into place. Then the men began to file quietly after them and take up their positions alongside - a small sea of packs, weapons, steel helmets and webbing straps.
Hockold drew Meinertz aside as they pushed past. ‘You quite happy, Meinertz?’ he asked.
Meinertz wasn’t sure whether to be happy or not. A lot seemed to depend on him and his crew; and although he’d had him practising day and night, his gunner still hadn’t managed to hit much. Since, however, the range was likely to be point blank, he felt they ought to manage. And now was no time, anyway, to say, No, he wasn’t happy -- quite the contrary -- he didn’t want to die and he was bloody unhappy.
‘Yes, sir,’ he said, surprised at the calmness of his voice. ‘I think we shall cope.’
One of the American medical orderlies was by the ramp handing out tablets from a large brown clinical bottle, and Cobbe bent his head and squinted at the label. ‘Avomine,’ he said. ‘For seasickness. It’s also given to expectant mothers for early morning sickness.’
Stinking of cigarettes but stone-cold sober, Lieutenant Carter leaned over the bridge where his crew were beginning to secure the splinter mats. His sobriety put him in a bad temper and he was dying for a drink. As the last man found his place, the ramp was raised and secured and LCT 11 became quiet.
‘Let go,’ Carter said, and the sound of the engines, murmuring at the stern ever since they’d arrived, grew in volume as slowly the ungainly-looking vessel backed off into deep water.
Another engine exploded to life among the launches where more men were filing aboard, carefully watched by Hockold and Murdoch and Amos and Rabbitt, to make sure no one got on the wrong vessel. As the naval launches filled up, the HSLs moved forward, their exhausts rumbling, their decks crammed with extra petrol tanks and collapsible dinghies. As they, too, disappeared into the shadows, Horambeb and a naval drifter edged alongside and the press of men moved forward again, nobody noticing in the dark that Tit Willow, sore knee and all, was among them.
They were all aboard an hour ahead of schedule and, certain that something must have gone wrong somewhere in the orderliness, Hockold began to move round the little fleet with Amos and Babington in an RAF seaplane tender. As they drew alongside ML 112, Lieutenant Dysart was waiting on the bow.
‘An hour to go, Dysart,’ Babington said. ‘You ready?’
Dysart gestured behind him. Vaguely in the shadows they could see seven dim shapes stretched on the deck. On one of them they could see epaulettes and the gold rings of a lieutenant.
‘Be glad to leave, sir,’ Dysart said. ‘This lot’s beginning to pong.’
‘Nothing likely to go wrong with the charge?’
‘No, sir. All checked and rechecked. Our boat’s alongside the bow. All we have to do is pay out the wire and touch the ends.’
‘Better synchronize watches. It’s 2315 exactly. One hour, forty-five minutes to go. The launch here will take you ashore.’
In Umberto, beneath decks that were crowded among the packing cases with gangways and ladders, put aboard at the last minute after dark and not yet properly stowed, the men of 97 Commando were still staring with horror at the space they were to occupy.
‘What do you do with your gear?’ Sugarwhite asked.
A slightly-built sailor who looked like a schoolboy grabbed his pack and stuffed it on top of a locker.
‘We’re more crowded than this, mate, in corvettes,’ he said.
‘ ‘Ow long ‘ave you beed in corvettes?’ Waterhouse asked.
‘Three years.’
‘You’re not old edough.’
‘I’m nineteen.’
‘No wonder you’re not very big. You ‘aven’t had room to grow.’
Incredibly, when they sorted themselves out, there was even space to sit down. They began to wander about, awed by their surroundings and a little scared by the difference between the sea and the land. To Taffy Jones, his unease nagging like a nail in his boot, the place looked like a steel tomb and, when a thump somewhere outside clanged against the side, a thin sharp flick of fright touched him and he jumped and stared round, expecting the metal wall to fall in on him under a gush of roaring water. ‘Torpedo,’ he said loudly.
‘Naw,’ one of the sailors said. ‘They’re at it all the time. In case of charioteers.’
Bradshaw caught the look on Taffy’s face and knew what it meant. ‘Cheer up, Taff,’ he said. ‘Have a fag. It’s only the old blood lust working up in you.’
‘Yes.’ Taffy almost snatched the cigarette. ‘That is what it is, see. The old blood lust.’
A few of the luckier men, or the cleverer ones, got invited to ‘sippers’ and joined in the matelots’ rum ration. The unlucky ones, those who felt seasick even in the bath, began to feel ill already. A few were even treated in the crews’ quarters to the incredible sight of an elderly three-striper knitting.
‘What is it, mate?’ Belcher asked. ‘Are we going to hear the patter of tiny feet?’
The three-striper looked up at him with cold contempt. ‘It’s for me grandchild,’ he said.
The thought of being a grandfather and having to fight in a war awed Belcher and he went away, silent.
It was 0025 when Hockold climbed aboard Umberto and headed for the ugly bridge, made even uglier with steel plates, splinter mats and sandbags that were still being put in place. Lieutenant-Commander Hardness was waiting for them. He handed round cigarettes.
‘Duty free,’ he said. ‘Don’t spare yourselves.’
They lit up and waited, none of them saying much, all of them going over and over in their minds what they were supposed to do.
At 0055, Hardness turned to his first lieutenant. ‘Gun ready, Number One?’ he asked.
‘Ready, sir. Loaded with blank.’
‘Good.’
‘Three minutes to go,’ Sugarwhite said below deck as he bent over his watch.
‘Two,’ Bradshaw corrected him.
‘Two and a half,’ a voice said behind them and they turned to see Cook-Corporal Rogers, devoid for once of his dirty white apron, and hung about instead with weapons and packs.
‘What are you doing here?’ Sugarwhite demanded.
Rogers stared back at him indignantly. ‘They’ll need someone to brew up, won’t they?’ he said.
They spent the next two minutes glancing surreptitiously at their watches.
‘0059,’ Hardness said as he stood on the wing bridge by the wheelhouse. ‘Stand by.’
‘Stand by, sir,’
Hardness was watching the sweep hand of his watch.
‘Fire!’
The gun banged and the flash lit up the ship and the tense faces. Almost immediately there was another bang and a flash on the stern of ML 112 fifty yards away.
‘Good shot,’ Babington said dryly.
ML 112 was already crackling and banging like a jumping cracker, and ammunition was flying in all directions. Lieutenant Dysart was not a parti
cularly energetic young man but he had ideas.
‘Start our own fireworks,’ Hardness said, and a few thunder-flashes and flares were set off along the side of the bridge. They were dazzled for a while and deafened by the bangs. Then, hanging over the bows by the anchor cable, the first lieutenant called out his report. ‘Up and down, sir!’
At that moment, the RAF tender roared alongside Umberto, and a pilot ladder clattered down for Dysart’s crew to scramble over the low rail amidships, all wearing steel helmets and armed to the teeth.
‘Who the hell’s that?’ Hardness demanded.
‘Dysart and his chaps,’ Babington said.
‘They’re not supposed to be here.’
‘No,’ Babington said dryly. ‘But I thought they might be, all the same. Tell 138 to come alongside and pick ‘em up. Dysart might as well be where he can be most use and 138’s short of an officer. The rest of ‘em can be spread around among the other launches.’
Horambeb and LCT 11, as dark as the coaster, were already pushing their blunt noses through the water to take up their positions behind Umberto, followed by the launches which were swinging to form up in pairs astern. ML 112 was blazing merrily now, the ammunition still exploding and the flames sparkling on the water. Then there were a couple of heavier crashes and they saw planking fly through the air and splash into the sea. The stern began to sink. They knew the explosions had not gone unnoticed from the shore. Binoculars would be trained on the spot at first light next day.
The last few flames flickered and died and, as they dragged their eyes away, they realized that Umberto was on the move.
‘Qaba, here we come,’ Babington said.
Operation Cut-Price was under way.
4
Means had been taken to delude the German garrison who were worried by the successes of the Eighth Army which were already becoming apparent.
As the sun crept over the rim of the Mediterranean on 30 October 1942, the dark waters of Alexandria harbour were busy. A destroyer moved whooping towards the west. Freighters waited with the harbour clearance vessels behind the boom, ready to move into captured ports along the coast as soon as the army arrived and the demolition experts had finished their job.
The air was full of the drone of aircraft, and small boats dashed like beetles between the waiting ships. White harbour launches began to appear, green Egyptian flags fluttering from their trim sterns. On board were officials in red fezzes with portfolios under their arms, who tapped their legs with leather-covered canes. From somewhere a plaintive Bedou melody floated over the water.
Near where Umberto had been anchored, an Arab felucca had stopped, her forty-foot mast reaching to the sun. On her waist deck, still dripping water, was a grey-painted plywood dinghy marked with white digits, ‘112’. Its stern was splintered and scarred, and alongside it on the deck were two corpses which had been found inside it. Around the felucca, floating in the sea, were planks and cushions and pieces of wreckage. Then a man standing on the bow pointed and the felucca moved up. A boat-hook jabbed and a putty-coloured horror in naval uniform rolled and turned in the warm water, the face ruined and unrecognizable.
A rope was passed round the corpse’s chest and it was hauled on board because there was a reward for British bodies found in the sea. As it flopped on the wooden deck, a thin dark hand moved through the pockets. A few coins vanished at once; then a letter and a soaked wallet were dragged out. The Egyptians stared at each other and as they did so, the man on the bow pointed again. There was another body floating further away.
There were seven altogether and as the felucca delivered its grim cargo ashore, the Royal Navy men who had arrived with a lorry took the name of the owner and told him to report for his reward. As the lorry trundled off, one of the younger members of the felucca’s crew set off at a jog-trot for the native quarter. Within half an hour his news was being handed over to an Egyptian girl with a flat overlooking the harbour, who passed it on to a friend with a radio, who transmitted it in turn to those who might be interested in Qaba.
Kirstie McRuer was writing a confidential report, sitting in a typist’s chair and banging away at a typewriter with two fingers, when Murray appeared in her office at lunchtime.
‘It worked,’ he said. ‘Bryant’s contacts think Jerry’s swallowed it hook, line and sinker.’
She looked up but didn’t stop typing. ‘I’m glad,’ she said shortly.
‘A lot of it’s due to you, Kirstie. You put a great deal of work into this.’
‘I wanted to. I was glad to do it.’
Murray looked at her over his spectacles, fishing a little. He was a shrewd man and hadn’t failed to notice that Hockold had spent less time with him than he had with his planning officer.
‘I rather had to throw you on Hockold’s tender mercies,’ he tried.
She tapped out another sentence. ‘Yes, a bit,’ she said.
‘Rum sort, Hockold.’
She frowned as she replied. ‘I never thought so.’
‘Oh!’ Murray was intrigued. ‘Nice chap, though, really.’
She still kept her eyes on the typewriter but he saw her lips tighten. ‘George Hockold’s a good man,’ she said.
‘You’ve seen a lot of him over the last few days. Even over and above the call of duty.’
‘Yes.’
Murray lit a cigarette and allowed a long pause. ‘Come to mean anything to you, Kirstie?’ he asked abruptly.
She lowered her hands from the typewriter and swung the swivel chair until she was facing him. ‘Yes,’ she said firmly.
Her eyes were blazing and she spoke with such defiance, as though challenging him to dispute her opinion or question her any further, that he drew in smoke unexpectedly and was glad to turn away coughing. When he recovered, she was picking calmly at the typewriter again.
‘Well,’ he said, trying to make his peace. ‘Good luck to him, Kirstie. I think he’ll pull it off. At least Umberto’s at sea.’
Not half she wasn’t.
There was a small lop running, and it gave the ship an uneasy lurching motion that was sheer hell to the seasick men below.
Because the decks were packed with sailors trying to push the landing ladders and gangways into place and lash them alongside ready for dropping ashore, and men were still screwing steel plates to baulks of timber erected round the bridge and stacking sandbags in appropriate places, there was no room on deck for the troops. Forced to remain below, they fought with their queasy stomachs and clung grimly to the few places where fresh air was available. By common consent, those with stronger insides left them to it and kept out of their way.
With its steel bulkheads, the place looked like a prison, the men grouped chiefly near the ladders because there might be a torpedo and it might be necessary to get out in a hurry. Taped to- the bulkheads were roneoed maps of Qaba, but not many looked at them because they knew them off by heart now. Five hundred paces, turn left. Three hundred more and there you were. It was as simple as that because Hockold’s knowledge and Murdoch’s experience had made it so. A few men muttered to themselves, but most of them were bored and simply talked of wives, children and families. A few smoked, wrestled and indulged in horseplay. A few played cards - the officers bridge, the men poker or rummy. A few of the more experienced slept peacefully. Watching them, Hockold decided that he loved the army. In no other civilized unit did men mean so much to each other.
The men on Umberto were the lucky ones. Their ship was at least reasonably stable. Despite the calm sea, the smaller vessels were moving up and down like horses on a roundabout and the soldiers were suffering terribly from sea-sickness so that the smell below decks was already appalling. A stink of petrol, vomit and blocked-up lavatories filled the air, and the crews, knowing it would be their lot to clean it all up when the pongos left, could only regard the whole business with disgust.
Yet they were all glad to be on the way, despite what lay ahead. They were emotionally drained, and the prospect of act
ion was welcomed because it meant an end to doubt. If it had to be done, was the feeling, then let it be done and over with as soon as possible.
One or two had prayed quietly to themselves during the night, but the time had passed slowly because most of them had been too excited to sleep. As dawn had broken, a few had directed uneasy glances at the sea for prowling U-boats, and a few had kept their eyes on the sky for the Luftwaffe. But there were no U-boats and only RAF planes in the sky.
Because he needed to be busy, Taffy Jones was showing off his belt with its collection of regimental badges. ‘Seaforth Highlanders, Scots Guards, 17th Lancers, Buffs and Diehards,’ he was saying in a curious cracked voice. ‘I have got them all, look you.’
The tea and the food came round. It was chiefly bully sandwiches and soup. The smaller vessels had taken theirs aboard the night before and the bread was curling a little at the edges, but they ate it without complaint. At midday, the launches went in turn alongside Horambeb, chugging away on the beam, long enough to receive hot boxes and large Thermos flasks which had been prepared in the galley. Only Cook-Corporal Rogers complained at the tepid stew but during the afternoon, with nothing left to grumble about, he occupied himself with a game of poker.
‘ ‘Tes a nice pot you ‘ave there, me dear,’ Eva said.
Rogers stared at the money in front of him. ‘Won’t do me much good if I stop one, will it?’ he said.
Eva’s face was expressionless. ‘You could leave ‘un to me,’ he suggested.
Rogers seemed to be caught by a sense of foreboding. ‘Fair enough, Tinner,’ he said. ‘It’ll be in my wallet in my blouse pocket. Just make sure I’ve had it first, that’s all.’
In the wheelhouse of the landing craft, Carter lounged near the compass, idly watching the card. He was happy. He didn’t even have to worry about navigation. Not far below him, Corporal Cobbe was cheering up a group of young soldiers who had suddenly got cold feet. ‘Why worry?’ he asked. ‘We’ll either get shot at or we won’t. If we don’t, that’s all right. If we get hit, we’ll either die or we won’t. If we don’t, that’s all right. If we do, we shan’t be in a position to bloody worry, will we?’