Silent War

by David Fiddimore

  Roy had found a dirty black beret from somewhere. He was wrestling with the steering wheel when he said, ‘Permission to change hats, sir?’

  I just grinned at him, and his forage cap joined mine in the foot well behind us. I said, ‘Of course, Roy, and we can give up the sir again out here, if you like. Most people call me Charlie.’

  ‘That would be difficult, sir, but I could call you nothin’ if you wanted.’

  We agreed on that. It was the first of his conclusions which had matched Smart Alec’s: maybe he had the makings of an officer after all.

  I can find my way around a map because our navigator in Tuesday, our wartime Lanc, had shown me the rudiments. It might have been a morbid way to look at things, but on our crew you always learned to do someone else’s job, in case he copped it. We were heading for a heap of stones left by the Romans, somewhere out ahead of us, but the navigation wasn’t essential . . . we just followed the tracks that the Centurions had left. Hey, Romans . . . Centurions; that was quite good. Their tank trail was about fifteen feet wide, and stretched into the distance. You could easily see where they had broken through the crests of the ridges they had crossed. Maybe this wouldn’t take so long after all.

  And pigs might fly. This is Charlie’s world, remember?

  The going definitely got softer. We had to use the sand mats in places, and Trigger warned me that we might have to unship the metal sand boards if this got any worse. Then we found a Centurion tank. It was empty, and its metal hull was too bloody hot to stand on for long. It had thrown a track in a softish wadi, under a hill of blown sand. The digging all around it told us a tale.

  We found its crew of four half a mile further on, taking a breather. A sergeant and three men, who all turned as they heard Roy gunning the jeep through some loose stuff.

  The sergeant stood up with a weary grin on his face, and when we were up alongside I asked, ‘Anyone fancy a lift?’

  ‘Christ, it’s a Jerry: don’t you know the war’s over, chum?’ I’d forgotten my cap. Then he said, ‘Thanks, chum; thought we’d have to walk the rest.’

  Trigger coughed and said, ‘Thanks, chum, sir, I’m afraid, Sergeant. I have the misfortune to be driving an RAF officer in disguise.’

  It didn’t faze the man. He asked me, ‘Are you the one out with Peter Clare, and that new Lieutenant?’

  ‘I’m afraid I am, but don’t hold it against me. Do you lot want to hop on?’

  They did and they did, if you see what I mean. With six of us now, we bogged that much quicker if we strayed into the soft stuff, but we had three times as many people to get out and push, so it evened itself out. We caught up with the two remaining Centurion tanks an hour later. The Lieutenant in charge was just about to turn back to look for his lost charge, which, it just so happened was his only vehicle with a duff radio – he’d left them re-attaching a thrown track. Their radios were short-range jobs anyway – not good for much more than calling the next fag break.

  ‘We’ll look at the radio for you on the way back,’ I offered.

  ‘Tomorrow,’ he told me firmly. ‘It will be nightfall in an hour. With only the palsied lights on these things you won’t want to be messing about out there in the dark.’

  If I am honest – and this will earn me no credit among the tankies – I have to tell you that our friends in the Royal Tank Regiment don’t make very good char. But their bully and bean sandwiches are desert food to die for. Their cookie had even baked a walloping great tray of bread pudding on top of a tank engine in the course of their travels, and we finished our meal off with a hefty chunk of it which set in my stomach like concrete. If only I’d had that the day before I wouldn’t have been in so much bother, would I? We sat round a desert stove between the metal giants, and jawed by the light of a small roaring Tilley lamp, and a big low full moon. You could almost imagine reaching up and touching it: you never get moons that size in Blighty. We leaned our backs against the armour plates which reached down to cover the tops of the tanks’ tracks – I never learned what they were called, but they retained the heat of the day and it was quite cosy.

  At one point the Lieutenant leaned towards me and asked, ‘Why did you come out here? Why didn’t you just radio?’

  ‘Our bold leader was worried it would give his position away to the wogs again, so he sent us to find you. Only one message: the exercise is off . . . we’ve got to go home.’

  ‘I gathered that.’

  ‘Are you disappointed?’

  ‘Somewhat. I rather enjoy a bit of tanking.’ He was the only one I ever met who used the word that way.

  ‘I met some American tankies in the war in 1945 – in Europe.’

  ‘What were they like?’

  ‘As mad as monkeys. We liked them a lot.’

  He didn’t respond. He just looked across the light at one of his sergeants, and grinned. This mob seemed to have got it all together.

  Later I commented, ‘When I was getting a briefing I was shown a place on the map with some ruins. Is that far?’

  ‘You could hoof it along this Bedouin track in twenty minutes if you watched where you put your feet. Do you want to see it?’ He actually used the word as if it was spelt Bedou – Arab-style. I thought he was offering me company until he said, ‘Someone will lend you a torch.’

  The contrast between this lot and our nervy Smart Alec couldn’t have been greater – they were telling me to wander off into the blue on my own. A couple of the guys looked amused: they wanted to know what I was going to do. What I decided was that I’d better see a bit of old Egypt to tell the kids about, while I could . . . I’d seen bugger-all so far.

  Before I set off the Sergeant we’d rescued from a walk on the wild side advised, ‘Watch out for the snakes, sir. They like the big old stones, and they are all poisonous. Don’t go stroking them like they were cats.’

  ‘No, Sergeant. Didn’t Cleopatra try that and come unstuck?’

  ‘It’s not far, but if you get lost, stay put, and shine your torch upwards now and again. I’ll come out and find you.’

  I took my small pack, in which were a water bottle, compass and my pipe and tobacco. Once I was away from the tankies the moon was so large that I didn’t need the torch. It shone a cold white light on the old narrow track, and even the smallest of boulders threw a shadow. I made plenty of noise, whistled and kicked stones. Maybe if the snakes heard me coming, they’d get out of the way: there was nothing out here big enough to look on me as a snack anyway. It was cool, though, after the heat from the tanks, and I was glad of my jacket. After ten minutes I stopped, and lit up.

  Apart from the occasional distant laugh or shout from the camp, it was absolutely silent out there, and I lost even those noises after the second ridge. That huge moon and a billion stars – you’ve never seen anything like it. I felt something like a huge sigh go out of me . . . and felt suddenly and oddly content to be myself, and who I was, and where I was, and when. It was as if life stopped just briefly, in order to give me a breather. I know that you’ll laugh, but it was one of those moments after which you’ve never once ever been afraid of death again. Dying, yes – I know that’s going to hurt – but death? No. I was in the most barren place on earth, where the animals and insects and even some of the humans wanted to kill me. Where there was no water, and nothing but stones and sand, and little Charlie was taking time to play the philosopher. My old dad was going to love this when I told him.

  What they’d told me was that the ruins were on the far side of a rough scarp and, because they were precisely where the hard desert met the sand sea, they ducked and dived a bit. It all depended what the wind had been doing. Sometimes all you could see, they’d said, were a few stones poking above the sand . . . and sometimes the ruin was very exposed. Something built by the Romans they thought. Nobody had seen it on this trip. They didn’t seem even vaguely curious.

  The track angled over a ridge in the moonlight. There was a thick band of shadow before it: I’d have to watch myse
lf. The Lieutenant had assured me that the Gyppoes were far away – back in Cairo by now, old boy, bearing a couple of their wounded – but that didn’t stop me being reassured by the weight of my little pistol in my pocket.

  When I thought of Romans, I tended to think of gladiators in the amphitheatre, traders in the forum, and Vivien Leigh in skimpy slave-girl outfits, but what I saw on the far side of that ridge was none of these. It was a theatre. Columns and walls, and semicircles of flat stone seats: everything was bigger than I had imagined, and deep, and still standing head-height to a tall man. I was at the top of the ridge, which was actually the top remaining level of maybe fifteen or twenty tiers of seats: sand was pushed up into their angles, so in a way they looked like a series of descending waves under the moon. And the moon. It was behind and above the stage; almost balancing on the wall of remaining masonry. It dazzled me.

  The man standing low in the stage area didn’t dazzle me at all. In fact he looked rather annoyed to see me. The feeling was mutual. As I turned away he spoke.

  ‘Do not go, English soldier.’ He spoke conversationally, and in a cultured deep voice. He hadn’t raised his voice, since the theatre was still doing its acoustic magic. One of my problems was that I wasn’t an ‘English soldier’, was I? – Not in the technical sense, that is – whereas he was a soldier, and dressed like one. His KD trousers were proper trousers, not shorts. I was also pretty certain that he wasn’t English. What had that tankie said about the wogs? Back in Cairo by now, old boy. Yeah: ask me another! This man not only looked like a soldier, but the sort of soldier you didn’t fuck about with.

  And his suggestion was not a suggestion at all: it was a bloody order. What had I got myself into this time?

  He beckoned me to come down to him. I thrust my hand into my jacket pocket for the reassurance of my pistol. He shook his head, and glanced to my right then to my left.

  I also glanced to either side. To my left was a soldier I hadn’t noticed as I climbed the brow. He was leaning against a jeep smoking a cigarette, and cradling a sub-machine gun under one arm. The jeep looked newer than ours; one of those French Hotchkiss things. He looked awfully smart, had crinkly black hair, and smiled encouragingly. He was obviously not going to shoot me immediately. There was another soldier sitting on the ground about twenty feet to my right. I had walked up between them. So I smiled back, took my hands ostentatiously from my pockets and climbed carefully down the tiers of seats. It felt like take me to your leader time. It was probably meant to.

  The man I finished up facing was taller, broader and a bit older than me. He had a black lip-liner moustache, and black hair like his minders. He was handsome in a Clark Gable sort of way. I had hoped that these might have been French, but up close there’s no mistaking an Egyptian.

  He asked me, ‘I know that you are alone, but are you armed?’

  ‘I have a small pistol. Right jacket pocket.’

  ‘But not in your hand.’

  ‘Obviously. There’s no point. I couldn’t get all three of you.’

  He smiled, nodded and asked me, ‘Name?’

  ‘Charles Bassett. You?’

  He smiled again. I reckoned he was one of these guys who liked being talked back to.

  ‘Gamal.’ He said the word fast: I almost didn’t hear the g.

  ‘Pleased to meet you. What does that mean?’

  ‘My mother said it meant handsome; but my father insisted it meant camel. As I watched my nose grow to dominate my face, I realized that my father was right.’ He gave a short chuckle – two sounds – as if the memory amused him. ‘Your name, Charles, means manly.’

  ‘I didn’t know that, sir. They should have called me something which meant small . . .’ Why did I call him sir? I’ve told you I have had problems with that before. He wore absolutely no badges of rank, but I was certain he outranked me a thousand times over.

  ‘I am very interested in names. You can tell much from names. I study the names of Englishmen. Your General Montgomery had a picture of his adversary general, Rommel, in his caravan. He stared at it every day in order to get inside Rommel’s mind: he achieved that eventually, and beat him. I study English names. One day they will take me inside the minds of your generals and politicians.’

  ‘I don’t think you’ll find much there, sir. They mess up almost everything they try to do.’

  He smiled again, as if he had learned something useful. Maybe he had. ‘Do most English soldiers think as ill of your leaders as you do?’

  ‘I don’t know about English soldiers, sir: English airmen do.’

  ‘Ah. You are in the RAF.’

  ‘Pilot officer.’

  ‘I am a colonel.’

  ‘I guessed you were paid more than me: you have a better uniform.’

  This time he laughed aloud. I sensed his two men paying attention. He walked away from me, and sat on the stub of a column. There was another near it; he motioned me to it with a wave of his left hand. The moon threw our shadows on the flagstones beneath our feet. They bent like gargoyles on an English church.

  He asked me, ‘What are you doing here?’

  Tell the truth, or make something up? Does here mean Egypt, or this bloody ruin?

  ‘The truth is, Colonel, that I hate your bloody country and will leave it soon, but I have not seen any of your great antiquities. We are camped a couple of ridges back, and I walked here because I was informed that there was a Roman ruin. I wished to have something to tell my sons about when I returned home. Your turn.’

  ‘My turn?’

  ‘What are you doing here? I was under the impression that this particular empty piece of your country was out of bounds to all military units except the Brits.’

  ‘Ah, yes. But my family used to come out here, and picnic, you see – before the World War. Our parents were teaching us that there was more to history than pyramids and temples . . . and this is not Roman, by the way. It is Greek, and it is a theatre – the Ptolemies built it. They were great pharaohs, a wonderful dynasty, but unfortunately they were also Greek. The Greeks are like your generals and politicians . . .’

  ‘In what way?’

  ‘Sooner or later they mess things up.’ He smiled surprisingly gently as he delivered the punch line. I laughed, and he explained, ‘I come out here sometimes – with a bodyguard alas. We can no longer move freely in our own country because of you. I come out here when I want to think. When I have difficult decisions to make.’

  ‘It would be a good place for that,’ I told him. ‘Is one of your difficult decisions what to do with me, now that you’ve captured me?’

  He didn’t answer me directly; merely leaned one elbow on his knee, and his chin in the palm of his hand. He had unconsciously adopted the pose of Rodin’s Thinker. He really had come out here to make a decision.

  He glanced up at me, and asked, ‘Will you tell anyone that we have met?’

  ‘I don’t think that would be a good idea, sir, do you? Anyway I don’t know who you are, so what would be the point?’

  ‘What if I became an important man in several years’ time? Appeared on your cinema newsreels?’

  ‘I should remind my boys of the Greek ruin in Egypt I had already described to them, and tell them I once met a man there who was making a difficult decision.’

  ‘Even if you realized then that I was not a friend of Britain?’

  ‘I wouldn’t let that worry you, Colonel; neither is anyone else.’

  He snorted again, and asked, ‘Do you know what I think, Englishman?’

  ‘No, sir.’ But I was bloody well going to be told, wasn’t I?

  ‘I think that maybe your sons have just saved your life.’ He paused, and we looked at each other. Just two men sizing each other up. ‘When you get back to England say hello to them, from a man named Camel. That will make them laugh . . . but never come back to my country in uniform again . . .’

  ‘Fine, Colonel.’

  As I stood and turned away he said, ‘Now: be Lot’s wif
e. Walk away from me, up those steps, and never look back. Walk back to your comrades. Stay safe. Go home. Salute your children. Live long.’

  I intended to. I stood and said, ‘Thank you, Colonel,’ and held out my hand.

  He shook his head. ‘No. I am sorry. Not while you occupy my country . . .’ He made a quick crossways motion with his right hand, waving me away. Dismissed.

  ‘In happier times then, maybe . . .’ I told him.

  I walked up the tiers of seats leaving my footprints in the sand. At the top the soldier with the Tommy gun shifted his weight against the jeep, and grinned again. He must have been used to looking after his eccentric boss. I walked away down the track, but a hundred yards on stopped, turned and looked back. Neither of the soldiers nor the jeep was there. I had heard nothing. Don’t ask me how they did that. It’s a mystery. I’d seen a bit of old Egypt and got away with it. I’d seen a bit of new Egypt as well, but I didn’t know it at the time. What goes around comes around.

  When I got back to the tank laager two Arabs had joined them around the desert stove. One was performing magic sleight-of-hand tricks: a gully-gully man . . . and the other was selling fruit. I don’t know why we even bothered. They disappeared during the night, and didn’t steal a thing despite what people tell you about the wogs.

  We turned back in the morning after sleeping in and on the vehicles, and being shaken out at dawn for the best part of the day. The tankies topped up their fuel tanks from spare petrol in jerrycans lashed to the hulls. It did cross my mind to wonder how close to its flashpoint the petrol in them became in the heat of the sun. Then they ran the engines to warm them up before they set off behind Trigger and me, and the lost crew. When I drove over the edge of the wadi in which I remembered we’d left the crocked Centurion I realized I’d cocked my navigation up.

  ‘Let me see the chart, sir,’ Roy Rogers asked me. After he’d spun it round and looked at it from different angles he offered, ‘I’m pretty certain that this is the right place.’

  ‘That’s what I thought.’ That was odd because there was a problem. The tank sergeant perched behind me expressed it for all of us.