Take or Destroy!

by John Harris

  There were. As soon as Sotheby had silenced the 47 behind the palace, the firing from the houses round German headquarters increased with the desperation of defeat. It was obvious that if they didn’t clear them, nobody would get down the mole.

  ‘Mr Rabbitt,’ Hockold said. ‘Wait here. Direct everybody you see to the ships, then go after them yourself. The rest of you, come with me.’

  They went in ones and twos across the road, heading into the houses round the German headquarters, kicking down doors and tossing Mills bombs inside. Almost immediately, they found Amos. He was obviously dying and the Egyptian girl was kneeling on the floor with his head in her lap.

  Hockold stared at him wretchedly. There was a saying in the North of England, when something happened that you’d already seen in the imagination, that it broke your dream. Amos’s dying had done exactly that for Hockold and he felt now that he wouldn’t die after all. Staring down with empty eyes at the man lying in the puddle of water on the rubble-strewn floor, surrounded by broken tiles and scattered plaster, it was as if he was staring at the picture he’d seen so often of himself, his head bloodied, his body twisted in pain, his hands groping blindly at his hurts.

  ‘I’m sorry, Frank,’ he said, bending down.

  Amos didn’t move but his eyes lifted and he gestured weakly with his hand.

  ‘Four times, sir,’ Sidebottom said. ‘Three in the face.’

  ‘Any others?’

  ‘Three, sir. They’re next door. Two prisoners.’

  Amos was signing to Sidebottom to find his pencil and notebook and, while the Egyptian girl supported him, he began to write. Sidebottom handed the notebook to Hockold.

  ‘He says we’ve to leave the wounded where they can still fire their bundooks,’ he said in a flat voice. ‘So the rest of us can clear out.’

  Inside the naval barracks, Hochstatter was standing by the telephone when Hrabak appeared. He was covered with dust and dirt and his uniform was torn. ‘Wutka’s dead,’ he said. ‘Nietzsche, too, I think. They’re heading this way now and they’re damned close. We’re doing no good here. It’s time we cleared out.’

  ‘Very well,’ Hochstatter said. ‘You go. I’ll follow.’

  As Hrabak and the naval signallers disappeared, Hochstatter stood by the window, hidden by the wall, staring down on the scene of destruction below him. He had imagined that the British had come to destroy the ships across the harbour, but their objective now appeared to have been only the petrol dump and the stores. Schoeler and his artillery had gone with them, however, together with a great many of his men.

  He saw Tarnow watching from across the room, half-crouched by the door because chips of plaster were falling from the ceiling, a bandage round his head, his face streaked with dried blood.

  ‘Better come now,’ he said.

  Hochstatter sighed and nodded. Then, refusing to crouch, he walked upright to the door.

  Murdoch had sent every man who could be spared down into the town, and they arrived just as the firing began to slacken. Rabbitt was waiting for them among the trees by the rubble of the Roman arch.

  ‘Get going,’ he shouted. ‘Look slippy.’

  As he waved them on he was moving through the sprawled shapes among the rubbish, turning them over, examining them. Taffy Jones was still crouching under the hand-cart, still holding his steel helmet over his eyes.

  ‘Where are you hurt, son?’ Rabbitt demanded gently.

  Taffy lifted his head, unable to speak.

  ‘‘Are you hurt?’ Rabbitt’s voice was harsher now. Then he stood up and gave Taffy a push with his boot.

  ‘Get going,’ he said. ‘Down the mole! Go on, hook it!’

  Taffy stared at him for a second then, like a cornered wild thing grasping at a chance of safety, he scrambled to his feet. Rabbitt gave him a shove and he joined the hurrying figures, running into the smoke drifting about the mole, his face soft and white and puffy, his chin wobbling, his eyes blinking at every bang, thankful to be out of it alive.

  He was only just in time. Aboard Umberto, the first lieutenant was looking anxiously at his watch. ‘For God’s sake,’ he said. ‘Where are they all? Where’s Hockold?’

  He glanced again at his watch. ‘We’ve got to go,’ he continued. ‘Those are the orders.’

  He leaned over the side of the splintered wing bridge. ‘Stand by, motor-launch! Let go aft!’

  It was just as Umberto’s stern was hauling off, with Dysart’s Fairmiles straining their engines, that Taffy Jones and the last group of men appeared in a crouching run. Rabbitt followed, upright and walking.

  ‘Avast heaving!’ The first lieutenant leaned over the wing bridge and bawled down to Dysart. ‘Shove us in again, for God’s sake, Dysart!’

  As Dysart reversed engines and the ML’s bows whacked against Umberto’s steel side, the running men scrambled across Horambeb and were hauled aboard Umberto.

  Panting, still terrified, but recovering quickly now that he was not being shot at, Taffy found himself alongside Auchmuty.

  The Scotsman’s eyes met his, pale and wild-looking in his blackened face. As usual he had no comment to make, but he smiled and Taffy realized that he knew nothing of what had happened by the mosque.

  He glanced round. Rabbitt was out of sight. He smiled back, shifting his big shoulders, feeling better, almost the Man of Harlech himself again already.

  ‘Them Jerries will remember us for a bit after this, look you,’ he said.

  Then they were shoved below and, as the last man was hauled aboard, a voice bawled over the wing bridge. ‘O.K. Dysart! Let her rip!’

  As the launches’ engines went astern once more, Umberto swung out, leaving the smoking wreckage of Horambeb still stuck on the mud.

  ‘Let go forrard,’ the first lieutenant yelled. ‘Dysart, stay close till the bang goes off. You might be glad of big brother’s protection.’

  Dysart grinned and waved, and with the two remaining launches lying close alongside her, Umberto began to head slowly north-west out to sea. The first lieutenant was staring back at the mole.

  ‘For God’s sake,’ he said. ‘Aren’t the bloody things going to go off, after all?’

  At that very minute the whole sky over the harbour turned red.

  10

  Though there were some casualties, Qaba’s value as a supply base was seriously impaired...

  The crash as Andolfo went up flattened Bradshaw against the stone warehouse. He had been heading there for shelter as the ship exploded, and the blast lifted and carried him about twenty yards before it slammed him against the wall.

  There was a roar like sustained thunder going on around him, as if some titanic stonk had dropped nearby. His lungs emptied with a rush and a cry of protest burst from his lips. There was another enormous flash and he was rolled into a corner as if he were a ball of fluff before a breeze. He tried to shout for help but his mouth was like dry wood and all he could get out was a gasp. Things seemed to be dropping all round him and he was surrounded by a kind of inky cotton wool which was rolling up into the air. In one catastrophic moment of time as the shock wave swept back to him, the world seemed to have been jolted off its axis and he felt like a man travelling through space.

  Why he was still alive he couldn’t understand, but somehow he scrabbled for safety through an open door and crouched down with his head between his hands, wincing with a pain that had started in his ears. Almost immediately, it seemed, Guglielmotti went up as well.

  From the building at the other side of the harbour Hockold saw the first sheet of flame climb skywards as though it had livid red hands clawing at the heavens to drag itself up. The camouflage netting on the other ships lifted and billowed as if in a high wind, and then burning fragments from Andolfo came whirring down like glittering bats to set it on fire. Doors slammed open, the native boats moored in the harbour swung wildly on their moorings, and a native cart parked just under the trees by the mosque slid sideways into the roadway.

  J
ust recovering his senses after being sent head-first into the wreckage near the Roman arch by the shell from the 75, Sugarwhite had just scrambled unsteadily to his feet, bent like an old man with the pain in his ribs. The canary he’d rescued was silent now, a flattened dusty little body at the bottom of its crushed cage, trodden on in the confusion. Nearby, Gardner still knelt against the wall, his head down, mutely at prayer, and Sugarwhite stared at him stupidly, bothered that a life could be blotted out so completely -- that a decent, kind man could be there one minute and gone the next to whatever darkness death consisted of.

  He drew a deep painful breath. He knew Brandison was dead as well, together with one of the Stooges and Docwra. And doubtless Bill Brewer, Jan Stewer and Old Uncle Tom Cobley and all.

  ‘Oh, Jesus,’ he said in a welter of despair.

  He wiped the back of his hand across his face and his mouth opened and shut slowly, as if the hinges of his jaw were clogged with dirt; his head seemed numb but full of rushes of pain. Realizing he was the only man left alive in the rubble by the strongpoint, he began to weep with rage, fright and self-sympathy. His mouth sour from the taste of bile, he brushed a hand across his eyes to free them from the paste of sweat and grime. As he blinked, he saw Hockold’s party moving among the houses opposite, their water bottles flapping as they ran. He scrambled to his feet, wincing with pain, and shot across the Shariah Jedid after them, in a panic that he’d be left behind. He was just pounding up a flight of stairs where he’d seen them disappear, when the blast from Andolfo caught him and dumped him neatly at the bottom again. Somebody, he decided, had it in for him that day.

  Determined not to be left behind, he grimly pulled himself up again, his mood changing as he realized that in spite of everything that had happened to him, he was still miraculously alive. Suddenly he felt he was going to survive and the thought sufficed to encourage him. Mad enough to bite somebody, he determined once more to do someone some damage. He had already shot several Germans but this latest insult decided him to shoot more. As he got to his feet, a portion of the ceiling collapsed on to his steel helmet with a clang that almost broke his neck and he felt certain he’d been hit on the head with an anvil. Guglielmotti had joined Andolfo, and more blazing fragments of netting were swept upwards to join the others that were descending on the town like crimson snowflakes. The roof above Sugarwhite, already weakened by the exploding Andolfo, lifted then sagged towards him in a shower of tiles, bricks, timbers and dust.

  The two ships had been torn open by the blast and now sank hissing into the water, their decks a mass of white-hot flame. But Cassandra, the outside ship on the trot, was still afloat. Her ropes severed, her bridge flattened, her masts and funnel gone, and licked by flame from Guglielmotti, she drifted into the middle of the harbour. Then she went, too, and a final shower of bricks, timbers, tiles and other debris, all that was left of the roof, fell on Sugarwhite and buried him.

  To Bradshaw, crouching inside the warehouse, it seemed as if the end of the world had come. He was aware of flashing lights and timbers falling on him as the roof collapsed, of the ground coming up to hit him, and sheets of corrugated iron sliding down out of the sky to clank to the concrete around him. He prayed that none of them would fall on him because, if they did, they would probably cut him in half.

  Moving out towards the POW compound on the higher ground, which they were hoping to defend, Hochstatter, Tarnow and Hrabak stopped and turned.

  ‘Gott im Himmel! Hrabak gasped. ‘They got the ships after all!’

  The machine-gunners on top of the naval barracks had been lifted neatly over the edge of the roof with their weapons and deposited in the roadway, and were now trying to crawl to safety, bruised and breathless, several of them with broken limbs. By the Mantazeh Palace, crouching down out of the blast, Sergeant Berringer bent over Sotheby to protect him from the debris falling in showers from the ornate turrets.

  ‘Got the bub-buggers,’ he heard Sotheby whisper.

  The blast seemed to send Umberto rolling over, so that her torn upperworks heeled against the sky and her mizzen topmast crashed to the deck in a tangle of ropes and blocks and a shower of old rust.

  As she straightened herself up and the crew began to hack at the debris, Devenish, propped up alongside the bridge, grinned at the men around him, their faces lit up by the flare of flame.

  ‘That’ll make the bloody Afrika Korps think!’ he said.

  Lifting his head as the pieces of metal and wood and fragments of burning camouflage net stopped splashing into the water of the harbour and spattering into the roadway, Hockold could see Umberto in the glare, standing off to the west. Above him, the drone of the last of de Berry’s aeroplanes was fading. The searchlights were going out one by one now and the bark of the anti-aircraft guns had stopped.

  Mentally counting numbers, Hockold knew his group had been cut to pieces and he looked around, trying to identify the men who were still with him. Under the grime the blackened faces were almost unrecognizable but he was able to pick out Sergeant Curtiss, struggling with his set to pluck strangled signals out of the interference.

  ‘Are we still in touch?’ he asked.

  Curtiss’s head turned. ‘Yes, sir. Just.’

  Hockold looked faintly embarrassed. ‘Tell Umberto : “Having wonderful time. Wish you were here.” The navy likes funny signals.’

  The dressing station in Dr Carell’s bunker was full of wounded now, sitting about in untidy heaps, their clothes cut away to show stained bandages. The place reeked of blood, ordure, sweat and the scent of death.

  As Hockold entered, he saw pleading, unsteady eyes and faces close to hysteria. At one end were nine bodies, lying on their backs staring at the concrete roof. Near them a sailor was dying with fifteen bullets in his chest, and an RAF corporal shot through the back of the head was snoring as if asleep. His skin was already grey. Another man’s stomach wound had been plugged, and an orderly was now filling the hole with sulpha. Most were suffering from shock but Hickey was keeping them well doped with morphia while a medical corporal was writing with copying pencil on their foreheads the dose they’d been given. There were a few groans and cries and a low voice muttering in delirium; but for the most part, as they hugged their hurts to them in the modesty of pain, emotion was frozen on each face, so that it possessed its own permanent look of dumb bewilderment and eternal questioning, so sharp that Hockold found himself glancing at his own face in a small mirror hanging on the wall to see if it were the same.

  Hickey had straightened up, his white apron stained.

  ‘We’re leaving,’ Hockold said quietly. ‘Are you ready?’

  The American smiled. ‘I guess I’ll stay,’ he said.

  ‘It was the understanding that the wounded were to be left behind.’

  ‘I guess I’ll still stay, Colonel.’

  ‘Very well. And thank you. I hope it won’t be for long.’ Hockold nodded at Carell, waiting, stiffly precise, to one side. ‘Keep him here, if you can. We don’t want him to let his friends know we’re pulling out.’

  ‘Okay, sir. I can handle that, I guess.’

  When Hockold returned to the buildings by the Shariah Jedid, a wounded man had taken Curtiss’s place on the radio. ‘I can keep on sending, sir,’ he said. ‘Make ‘em think you’re still here.’

  Hockold nodded. ‘It won’t be long,’ he said. ‘Eighth Army can’t be far away and they’ll come faster than ever now.’

  Withdrawing the last of his men, he joined Sergeant Sidebottom. Jacka’s party had just appeared.

  ‘ ‘Lo, Sidi,’ Jacka said flatly.

  ‘Sham, Jacka. Greetings!’

  Belcher was staring at Waterhouse’s swollen mouth. ‘Fink somebody’s done for you, mate,’ he said flatly.

  Waterhouse’s grin was lopsided and bloody. ‘Right id the soddig bouth,’ he agreed.

  They moved the wounded to the windows and gave them their weapons, trying to comfort them with grim jokes and rough tenderness. Then Hockol
d bent over Amos. ‘So long, Frank,’ he said.

  Amos nodded feebly, his eyes full of blank uncomprehending pain.

  ‘We’re going now,’ Hockold said, and Amos nodded again; his eyes watched them all the way to the door.

  Withdrawing the last men from the surrounding houses, Hockold set off up the Shariah Jedid towards the back of the town. After a while, they reached the vineyards and then the road. As they emerged, they were recognized by Murdoch waiting by the bungalows near the fuel dump.

  Blackened faces split in broad grins as the two groups greeted each other and thumped each other’s backs. Hockold quietly shook hands with Murdoch.

  ‘We seem to have done what we came for,’ he said.

  ‘Did they all go up?’

  ‘All except the ammunition. But ammunition’s no good if there’s no petrol to carry it to where it’s wanted.’ Hockold glanced towards the south where the racket at the airfield seemed now to have stopped. Over in the east they could still hear the thunder of guns and see the flashes in the night sky.

  ‘Eighth Army seems a bit nearer,’ he said. ‘I think we’d better head south.’

  They were still bent over the injured when Sotheby’s party arrived. As they appeared, Hockold stepped forward.

  ‘Who’s that?’ he asked.

  ‘Mr Sotheby, sir,’ Berringer said.

  ‘Is he bad?’

  ‘I don’t think so, sir.’

  ‘I’m glad you cleared the compound. We saw them coming through the town.’

  ‘We did more than that, sir,’ Berringer said. ‘We captured the 75 and used it to knock out the 47 on the mole. Then we sorted out the 47 behind the palace.’

  ‘So that’s why they stopped,’ Hockold said. ‘Well done, Sergeant.’

  ‘Not me, sir,’ Berringer said, nodding at Sotheby. ‘Him.’

  After a while, it dawned on the Germans and Italians in Qaba that there were no British remaining in the place except for the dead and the badly wounded who’d been left behind. Warily, they began to emerge.