Killing Rommel

by Steven Pressfield

  Ten minutes later the Hurricanes have gone and so have we, tearing south into the desert. Grainger’s truck and Conyngham’s jeep are missing. We have no idea what has happened to Jake or Nick or to Major Mayne and the SAS men.

  18

  IT TAKES FORTY-EIGHT hours, travelling by night and lying up by day, to reach the rallying point at Bir el Ensor, Sore Thumb. We have barely closed an eye the entire way.

  Two miles into the desert, fleeing the enemy, Te Aroha IV’s engine begins pouring smoke. Five hours of daylight remain; we can see the dust of Axis armoured cars several miles behind us and hear aircraft engines east and west, searching for us and the others. Luck stays with us. The enemy, it seems, have been tardy in realising that the raid was truck-borne as well as from the air. Our vehicles, barrelling across the camp, were mistaken by the Germans for their own, evading the planes. By the time they reckon what’s what, we’ve got a start on them. At nightfall, our first halt to draw breath, Punch discovers a heavy-calibre rip through the sump and a crack in the block you can stick your little finger into. “I told you,” says Punch. “She’s been running on two cylinders for twenty miles.”

  The truck pushes on, leaking and overheating. Standage groans in the back. His wounds are in both legs. The right is mostly burns and abrasions, but the left has been nearly severed at the knee; the bottom half is bound to the top only by strips of bloody gristle, for which trauma we can do nothing except bind the mess as tightly as we can and shoot Standage full of morphia. Punch and Collie have cleared a space for him among spare wheels and petrol tins and set him on our combined bedding, which, we discover when we unbundle it, has been set alight by tracer fire and charred half to rags. None the less we pack this under and round Standage, trying to make him as comfortable as possible. His only complaint is the cold. Funny, when a man is hit, you call him by his nickname. Standage has become “Stan” and now “Standy.” Collie donates his syrette of morphia though he needs it badly for his own burns. I contribute mine too. Standage’s courage humbles us. Collie himself is burnt across his back and neck and the right side of his face. His beard has been singed crisp. The truck gasps and wheezes across the plain. The radiator keeps boiling over. Its overflow tank has been holed and continues to drain despite patch after patch. We refill using the “honey jar” of our week’s urine, saved for just such an emergency. I’m worried about Collie going into shock. He deflects my concern. “Plenty of time,” he says, “to fag out tomorrow.”

  When the engine becomes too hot to run, we shut down in neutral and push. The labour strains us nearly to our limit, but we have no other option. If we abandon the truck, we’ll have to carry on our backs water, food, ammunition and guns, not to mention Standage, on whom the passage will be a lot easier reclining on blankets than carried in a litter. In fact, mercifully he conks out under the morphine. We push till the engine cools, then fire up and drive till we smell steam and gaskets smoking. Push and drive, push and drive. Our “A” set has got wrecked sometime during the escape. Worse, the theodolite has been shattered. We can’t transmit or receive and we can’t navigate. Sometime around 2200 we notice the truck getting easier to push. A downhill. We’re so addled with the hangover of adrenalin, fear and exhaustion that we begin laughing. We give the truck a rousing shove, then leap aboard and coast. It’s sport. The truck is picking up speed. The night is moonless; it’s like driving through ink. No one is even at the wheel. What could we possibly run into in the middle of the desert? Suddenly Punch cries “Brake!” Next thing we know, Te Aroha IV’s nose is in mid-air and the frame is crashing like a bomb on to the stone rim of a fifty-foot escarpment. The truck hangs up, half over the precipice. Standage shoots upright with a howl. The rest of us grab any handhold we can find and, hauling with every sinew, manage to manhandle the vehicle back from the brink. Standage is in agony from the jolt. We swaddle him with every scrap of blanket we’ve got, imploring his forgiveness and promising never to let it happen again. “Bugger!” says Stan. “I woke and thought I was dead.”

  We’re spent and freezing. I call a rest and break out the rum. We’re mad to risk a flame to brew up but I’ve got to get something hot and sweet into my men’s stomachs. We’re just sharing out the tea when Grainger’s truck appears out of the darkness.

  He’s been nosing along the same scarp for an hour, having nearly gone over the edge several times himself. The truck trundles up, preceded by wary long-distance halloos. By heaven, we’re relieved to find each other! Grainger’s wireless is still working and so is his engine. He takes us in tow. His men Marks and Durrance are alive and unhurt, but Corporal Conyngham and Holden and the jeep are still missing. “The Jerries probably grabbed them,” says Grainger, “back there in the shoot-up.”

  By dawn we’ve got both trucks under netting in a shallow wash. We snooze on and off all day, doing maintenance on the weapons and improvising seals and plugs for the various points of leakage in the engine’s lines and hoses. Collie claims his burns are only a nuisance. I’m not so sure. We scrounge up every bit of margarine to grease him down and even use motor oil, which at least is sterile coming straight from the tin. We prop him in a hammock alongside Standage and try to keep him warm. Grainger’s truck has two more morphine stickers, which we save for Standage. It’s extraordinary how lucid he remains. He asks me to read to him. From my rucksack I produce Paradise Lost.

  Standage can’t take it. I try the Bible; that doesn’t work either. I wind up reading from Stein’s manuscript. Standage likes it. The homosexual allusions sail right over his head. I’ve forgotten how good the book is. It lifts me too. When we get tired, I tell Standage about Stein and how he died. He tells me about his daughter in New Zealand. She’s a piano prodigy. In the farming community outside Wellington where Standage and his family live, there’s no teacher capable of taking his daughter to the level that he and his wife believe she’s capable of achieving. Standage and his brothers have pitched in so that the young girl can live and study in town. “I miss her badly,” says Standage, “but when a girl’s got a gift…”

  As he’s telling me this, the oddest thing happens. I realise what I want to do with my life. My civilian life, that is, if I ever get back to one. I want to be a publisher. Not a writer. I lack the gift and I’m not cut out for the loneliness.

  A publisher. I’ll have my own house and bring out writers. Why hadn’t I thought of this sooner?

  I tell this to Standy. He gets it right away. “Stuff comes to you at the strangest times, don’t it, Skip?”

  Patrol commander is not my post; it’s Collie’s. But the others take note of Standage’s slip of the tongue. He’s lying under camouflage netting with his bad leg bound and splinted and his head pillowed on the oak block we use to brace the jack on. I glance to Collie, who rests on his side in the back of the truck on an improvised hammock with his back, neck and face bandaged. He meets my eye. So do Punch and Grainger.

  By this silent ratification, I have become patrol commander.

  Enemy scout planes overfly us all day, Henschels and Storches and, mid-afternoon, a flight of Italian Macchi fighters. Around dusk we hear a lone engine circling. Punch and I take the Browning and creep up to the crown of the wadi we’re lying up in. A Storch scout plane with black Axis crosses on both wings sets down on the flat, stopping two hundred yards in front of us.

  The hatch opens; out pops the pilot. He’s alone. Punch fixes him in his gunsights. The flier has no idea we’re here. He drops his trousers, grabs hold of a wing strut and unloads a defecation that would make a plough horse proud. Punch’s finger tightens on the trigger; I stop him with a hand on his shoulder.

  “If that plane doesn’t return to its base tonight, the Jerries’ll send ten more looking for it tomorrow.”

  Reluctantly Punch backs off.

  The pilot climbs into his Storch and wings away.

  “I’d love to run into that bastard someday,” says Punch, “just to tell him how close he came.”

  The follow
ing night, riding and being towed, we limp in to our base at Sore Thumb. Nick Wilder is waiting with the remains of T1 patrol, two trucks and six men. What’s left of Jake’s R1 are there too, with Captain Lawson, the medical officer. Jake himself was evacuated twenty-four hours ago with a broken collarbone, along with six other wounded LRDG men. A signal from Cairo has ordered them to retire to Bir al Khamsa; another patrol will be despatched to pick them up. Jake has asked Doctor Lawson to remain, anticipating serious casualties among the later-arriving parties.

  While we newcomers scratch out a camp, Major Mayne straggles in with three jeeps and six troopers, including Cooper, Seekings and Mike Sadler. Four of his commandos are missing. Mayne plans to rest only long enough to get a meal and a brew; then he’ll turn back with his surviving men to look for the missing. He will not leave them on foot with the enemy hunting them.

  Bir is Arabic for well. Our lie-up is typical of these flyblown oases: a patch of stunted palms, a few scattered outbuildings and the well itself—a circle of mortared stones with an iron cover called a meit, pronounced “mate,” to keep out the drifting sand. A flap-door allows a bucket through; when the bir is dry, the tribesmen haul the cover off and rope themselves down into the void, seeking a trickle. Campsites lie here and there among the camel thorn. This night in addition to our lot, several kin-groups of Senussi Arabs have set up shop. You can smell their camels and hear the jingling of the bells on their sheep and goats.

  Two crosses mark fresh graves. Nick tells me that three others of our fellows have been buried in haste during halts on the getaway. One was Malcolm McCool, the Kiwi sergeant who showed me my quarters the first day I joined the unit. Another was Corporal Mickey Lukich, an Olympic gymnast who came into the SAS as a driver for its founder, David Stirling, and who won the Military Medal for heroism in the first raid on Benghazi.

  It’s sombre, settling in. Captain Lawson has rigged the rear of his truck as a one-tent hospital. We give up Standage to his much-welcomed ministrations. Collie only wants grease or butter for his burns; he sets off with Punch to buy or barter some from the Arabs. A motor repair shop has been set up. Grainger brings our trucks in. I report to Nick and Major Mayne, who both call me Chap and shake my hand with surprising affection. God knows I am glad to see them.

  The patrols have been out for more than a month now. Every man wears a beard. Here at the bir, there’s water for a shave. No one wants it. The matted growth has become a badge of honour; to scrape it off would somehow devalue the sacrifice of our fallen comrades.

  Before he goes seeking the missing, Major Mayne calls a council. For several minutes the talk is of the men we’ve lost and those who’ve been brought out wounded. Jake’s party, Mayne speculates, will be halfway to Bir al Khamsa by now. While he’s speaking, a signal comes in from HQ informing Mayne, who has assumed command since Jake’s evacuation, that three Bombay bombers equipped as ambulances will be sent from Cairo to LG 119, an emergency landing ground that is farther away than Khamsa but over better going. This signal will be sent to Jake at his next scheduled check-in. With luck, our commander and his wounded will be on clean sheets at Heliopolis in three days.

  What about us? Jake’s truck and jeep have taken as little petrol as possible to complete their passage, but even this modest measure depletes the overall stock, leaving the remaining vehicles low. The patrols have water now from the bir, but ammunition is short, both fitters’ stocks of spare parts have been lost, and we don’t have a single vehicle without mechanical problems of one sort or another. Speculation follows on what retribution Rommel will seek when he learns that raiders have targeted him personally.

  What do we do now?

  Have we had it?

  Do we turn back?

  The council is held in the lee of Nick Wilder’s wireless truck. The fitters, Durrance and Lister, give their report. They’ll need another day, possibly two, to put the trucks right. Captain Lawson expresses concern for the wounded. Standage must be transported to aid. Two of Mayne’s SAS men need attention too. All three must be put on trucks as soon as the vehicles can be made mechanically sound and evacuated to LG 119 or to wherever Cairo designates. Should Lawson accompany them? Leaving the patrols without a medical officer? Do we all go back?

  Mayne wants to know first what damage our raid has done. Nick and I with Sergeants Kehoe and Wannamaker and the SAS NCOs give our assessments. The conclusion is, Damn little. Mayne is furious with us and with himself. While the council debates, a signal comes in from Cairo. Both patrols are to withdraw to refit and await orders.

  “Balls,” says Mayne.

  He wants to go back after Rommel.

  Someone asks whether he’s serious.

  Mayne spreads a map and indicates Alamein. “Monty will break through the Jerries any minute. Rommel will fall back. Hell, he’s falling back already.” Mayne indicates the open desert south of Mersa Matruh and Sidi Barrani. “Wherever Rommel goes, we’ll get there before he does. We’ll be waiting for him.”

  I look to Nick Wilder. He’s grinning. So are Reg Seekings, Johnny Cooper and the SAS men. Are they out of their bloody minds? Sergeant Wannamaker attempts to restore sanity. He cites the enemy ground and air patrols scouring the desert right now. Do we imagine the whole Afrika Korps isn’t on high alert, hunting for us? We don’t have Directional Finding any more and we don’t have the RAF.

  “Screw the RAF,” says Mayne. “This whole show has been too complicated from the start. We should’ve beat up the Huns on our own and not mucked about with this three-ring circus.”

  There’s truth to this, the men acknowledge.

  “We’ve buried five good men,” says Major Mayne, “and sent nine others home in pieces. I’m not arguing for throwing good money after bad, but, hell’s bells, the rest of us are still on our feet. We’ve still got punch.”

  Someone asks what we do about HQ’s orders.

  “What orders?” says Mayne.

  Planning begins. The men know this is lunacy. But Mayne is right. The enemy expect us to run; they’ll throw all their pursuit parties on to the tracks along which we’re likely to flee. They know we’d be crazy to go the opposite way.

  “Crazy,” says Paddy Mayne, “is our business.”

  19

  THE PATROLS TAKE two more days bringing in the missing (all of whom are recovered unharmed), repairing the trucks and allowing the men time to rest and recuperate. The remaining wounded, including Standage but not Collie, who refuses to be evacuated, will make for Landing Ground 119, about ninety miles northeast of Jarabub oasis and a hundred and twenty south of Halfaya, as soon as vehicles can be made ready to transport them. Sergeant Wannamaker, who is suffering from dysentery and must go back anyway, will lead the party.

  Major Mayne orders the camp moved from Bir el Ensor, which as it turns out takes a pasting from ME-110s ten hours after we get away. The patrols move twelve miles east the third night, as far as the trucks can go in their shaky state, and south another fifteen the next.

  The scheme has changed. Monty and Eighth Army are breaking through at Alamein more powerfully than anyone had anticipated. Rommel is pulling back fast. The Allies could reach Mersa Matruh in a matter of days; Tobruk could be liberated soon after. New orders despatch us even farther west. Intelligence reports that Rommel’s intestinal disorder still plagues him; short of Tripoli, five hundred miles away, only Benghazi possesses proper medical facilities. The Desert Fox will go there, HQ believes. We will too.

  Our party has been joined by a third patrol. Second Lieutenant Tinker with T2 has come out from Faiyoum via Kufra, crossing the neck of the sand seas where we did at Garet Chod and swinging east, avoiding Jarabub. One of Tinker’s trucks takes our wounded aboard; another tows our most damaged vehicle. In this ragtag column we cover fifty miles to a good safe camp at Gadd el Ahmar, which is far enough south to elude Axis scout planes and far enough west to be within a day’s hard drive of LG 119. Tinker is the officer I shared a room with at training camp, though we nev
er met because he was out on patrol. With him are twelve men in three trucks and two jeeps carrying our White Russian friend Popski with two savage-looking Senussi guides and a couple of Warwickshire gunners who look like no serving soldiers I’ve ever seen. “Who are these fellows?” I ask Nick.

  “Never ask Popski his business. I promise this, though: These buggers can slit a throat.”

  It was Tinker and Popski, we now learn, who beat Wannamaker and me to the petrol dump at South Cairn. Their headlights were the ones tracking us in the dark. One of Popski’s tribesmen shows me the holes our Vickers put in the side of their jeep. I give him a tour of our patched jerry cans. Having shot at each other creates a bond. At once we are the best of mates.

  As for Tinker, I’m delighted to make his acquaintance. He’s a Kiwi like Nick, twenty-nine years old, a handsome devil with a thick jet-black beard that gives him the gravity of a man ten years older. Tinker, his mates testify, is the best navigator in the LRDG (though he has moved beyond this, becoming a patrol commander) and a crack desert hand. When I ask him why he ran his trucks with their headlights on when they were stalking us, he responds with a grin. “To draw your fire. We had the moon behind us; we could see the glint off your bonnets but couldn’t make out who you were. There weren’t supposed to be any friendly patrols in that area so we reckoned you were Jerries.”

  His intention, Tinker says, once we opened fire, was to immediately douse his lights and scatter, returning fire using our muzzle flashes as aiming points. “But your shooters were too good,” he laughs. “We got off one burst and had to run for it.”

  Tinker is another of these chaps, like Mayne and Wilder, who are born warriors. Mayne, the rugby star, is a formidable, even frightening example of this type. Tinker’s patrol sergeant, Garven, has told me of a raid last year on the German aerodrome at Berka. Mayne led the SAS team that infiltrated on foot at night to plant incendiary bombs on parked aircraft. Once inside the wire, the raiders realised that each plane was guarded by an armed sentry. Mayne killed seven of them, one by one, with his knife, in the dark, going round the field planting his explosives.