How I Won the War (10 page)

“Jaiba? You’re miles past Jaiba. This is Tunis!”

“Tunis!” I cried. “Good Lord!”

“Tunis!” groaned Sergeant Transom. “And Tigers behind us.”

“Tunis!” beefed Private Drogue. “I ain’t transferred to no suicide squad.”

“Tunis!” yelped Private Spool. “Stop the bus. We’re going the wrong way.”

“Tunis!” said Corporal Dooley. “Then I’ll be asking the foreman for me cards.”

“Turn left here!” snapped our guide. “Quickly … now right … and straight through the yard of that factory …”

We twisted and turned, up alleys barely wide enough for the trucks, across vacant lots, along canal banks, through a railway tunnel and down into dockland. Swaying and rattling over the broken cobbles we swung through a warren of warehouses, over a slender steel bridge and on to a wharf…. The doors of a vast corrugated iron barn were open … the trucks roared inside and slammed to a frantic stop among serried ranks of grain bags.

The magnitude of our deed suddenly struck me.

“First into Tunis, Sergeant Transom,” I said. “For the glory of the Musketeers.”

“And first for the flaming firing squad when Jerry comes over that bridge.”

“Not to have no fear,” said the maquis-man. “I fix it. I am Henri Jardot. How do you do?”

He extended an old-world hand and I shook it on the run back to the entrance.

“Pleased to meet you. I am Lieutenant Goodbody.”

We helped him slide shut the doors from outside and the vehicles were hidden. He turned to a winding gear at the head of the bridge and started cranking for all he was worth…. Slowly the carriageway pulled away from the mainland and swung towards us.

“It’s a swing-bridge,” said Sergeant Transom. “We’re
pulling
up the ladder behind us.”

We joined the panting winder and soon the bridge lay flat against our bank. Thirty yards of dark water separated us from the dock. We ran back inside the building.

“Is this an island?” said Sergeant Transom.

“Yes,” said the Frenchman. “Very small. Just this warehouse and the wharf around it. All belongs to me.”

“Corporal Dooley,” ordered Sergeant Transom, pointing to the gallery which ran round the storehouse. “Get up there and lay a couple of Brens covering the bridge. We don’t want Jerry nipping across and winding it back.”

“Not to have no fear. No one can move the bridge without the handle.” Henri held up the pinioned crank which he had withdrawn from the wheelhouse. “The bridge turns only from this side.”

He hung the handle from a peg near the door.

“That’s a help, anyway,” said the sergeant. “Corporal Hink … get a load of these sacks built up on the front walls. Corporal Globe, come down the back with me …”

With bastions of grain bags at strategic points and gun ports at every corner, I soon had the warehouse in a capital state of defence.

“I think,” said Henri after half an hour had gone by with no interruption, “that the Boche lost our trail. Otherwise he would have been here by now.”

“He might still be searching.”

“Maybe. But I don’t think so. I have men watching over there. The Boche has big trouble south of Tunis. Three—four divisions coming at him. He’s not much time to worry about twenty—thirty men like you got up here in the north. He’s still got thousands of men and knows all you can do is lie low till Tunis falls.”

“If he’s got all those troops round about,” asked Sergeant Transom, “why did he let us get in so far?”

Henri’s Dali moustache crinkled in admiration.

“That Boche armoured car. He thought, like we did, that coming back behind the Tigers you were a column of
prisoners
with armoured car escort. That’s why we were all ready for you. We had ambush laid at the corner where I jumped you…. You damned brave man, Lieutenant, bluffing your way in like that with just twenty—thirty men. But you never stood no chance without tanks.”

I shrugged with British devil-may-care.

“Toujours
l’audace,”
I said. “Nothing venture, nothing gain. What is life but a gamble with death?”

I was about to quote the pitch-and-toss bit from Montrose, when Corporal Dooley yelled down from the gallery.

“We got visitors. Ship, ahoy!”

Henri opened the wicket in the main door. Four rowing boats were coming across from the mainland, loaded to the gunwales with women.

“Stop!” I cried. “Go back! This is a battle area. Out of bounds! W. D. property! Go back!”

I recognized their gaudy colours in a flash. An efficient officer can always learn something from his mistakes. I had profited from my unfortunate error at Cleptha. I could now recognize a prostitute when I saw one and here were four boatloads of them just making landfall on my fortress. Their vast, brassy haired captain, laocooned in beads, came at me like Hackenschmidt and folded me suffocating to her
bosom
.

“English!” she cried. “Always everybody love the English. We come when we hear. We give you big welcome and plenty good time.”

“But, madame,” I said, “we are in no position to …”

She held up a magisterial hand.

“You say not nothing. This is for free! For the first of the English in Tunis everything is for free. I give you cards and you tell all your friends that come later to go to Rosabella for plenty good time.”

She plucked from the chimney of her cleavage a pack of gilt-edged cards and dropped them into my hand. The whole of Twelve Platoon had deserted their posts and were engaged in helping Rosabella’s handmaidens to disembark themselves and their basket cargo of food, drink, and gramophone records.

“You very lucky, Lieutenant,” said Henri. “She bring you best bad women in all Tunis. Now the Germans are going, she look for new custom.”

“Stop!” I commanded. “Put those women down. Drop them back in the boats. You cannot land here, madame. You must take your employees back to the mainland.”

“Why you like that?” demanded Rosabella. “You ain’t queer or something?”

“No. Not at all. I order you to leave this island. We are not here to play games. We are fighting the Germans.”

“Why you be like that? Don’t you wanna good time? If you send my girls away, you know what they do?”

“I am not in the least concerned …”

“If you send them back they go and tell Germans just where you are. Then they bring guns and blow you all to hell.”

“Oh … I see….” That was more than I could risk. And a plan was brewing in my mind which required peace till nightfall. “Then they will have to remain on the island. But in purdah…. Sergeant Transom … construct a Ladies Only enclosure with grain bags against the end wall…. Everyone back to his post!”

When the harem was marked off by a wall of sacks, I herded the protesting females inside. I made a chalk sign with “Out of Bounds to British Troops” on one side and “No Females Past This Point” on the other. I placed Private Clapper on guard at the entrance, feeling that his continued concern for Mrs. Clapper’s fidelity might make him a
trustworthy
eunuch.

“Is not right,” wailed Madame Rosabella. “We come long way to give first English plenty good time.”

“Is not right, three ruddy bags full,” said Private Drogue. “For all the under we ever get we might as well be in the Salvation Army. Look at that biddy in the blue sweater. I could lose me way in her lot.”

I called together my order group.

“Since we have penetrated into the heart of the enemy’s camp,” I said, “it is our duty to exploit our success. As the general emphasized, we must keep at the enemy like a terrier after a rat. Also with the arrival of these fallen women it is advisable that we leave the island before they upset the rank and file.”

“Never mind the rank and file,” muttered Corporal Dooley. “There’s meself encumbered with two-bobs’-worth of Blackpool rock.”

“The crucial battle for Tunis is being fought to the south. A surprise attack on the Boche headquarters at this crucial moment would have a devastating effect. Henri can lead us
to the building. We will therefore open the bridge at first dark and make a lightning raid on General von Arnim’s headquarters.”

There was a silence. They were clearly stunned by the brilliance of my plan.

“Do you mean, sir,” said Sergeant Transom, “that we should go swanning down Tunis High Street in British trucks and have it out with General von Arnim personally with just one platoon?”

“Speed, Sergeant, is an essential element of surprise.” He turned to Henri.

“How far away is the Boche headquarters?”

“About two—three miles.”

“And how far d’you reckon we’d get?”

“Maybe half mile, if we have luck. Then just guns, tanks and roadblocks all the way. You ain’t just brave man, Lieutenant. You maybe crazy.”

“We don’t want to be no Charge of the Light Bridge, sir,” said Corporal Hink. “I don’t care if nobody never writes no poetry about me.”

“I ain’t after the V. C., sir,” said Corporal Globe. “
Specially
not posthumously.”

“You’ll be needing, of course, sir,” said Corporal Dooley, “the senior corporal to stay behind and look after the
billets
.”

I stressed to them again the vital military advantage of surprise and while I was talking I noticed the attention of my order group wandering continually towards the Ladies’
Enclosure
, where three of the most nubile occupants were belly dancing to “Ramona” on the gramophone. I detected then, of course, that their objections to my plan of attack were founded not on valid tactical considerations, but on simple lechery. They were merely being obstructive because they wished to stay on the island with the loose women. This strengthened my determination to carry through my plan and I gave orders then and there for a departure rehearsal.

“We must first lay on a drill for opening the bridge. Get the winding handle, Corporal Hink.”

“I can’t, sir. It’s gone.”

The peg on the wall was empty. Private Drogue spoke up from his post near by.

“I think it was one of them women nicked it while you were talking, sir. It might have been that bride in the blue sweater with top-heavy torso.” He growled like a frustrated gorilla. “Shall I search her for you, sir?”

There was a sudden splash in the water outside.

“That’s it, sir,” shouted Private Spool from the gallery. “That’s the handle gone in the drink. Looked like a tart slinging it, too.”

“Well,” said Sergeant Transom, beaming happily. “We can’t get the bridge over now. So we can’t go hell-for-leather after von Arnim, can we?”

“We will proceed on foot,” I said decisively. “That way we can avoid all roadblocks. And we will cross over in the prostitutes’ punts.”

I went to the powder-room and told Madame Rosabella that I held her responsible for the loss of the winding handle. If the culprit was not produced, she herself would be tried by drumhead court-martial for obstructing an officer of the British Army in the due performance of his duty.

“But why you so mean-hearted?” she demanded. “Why you want to take English boys away from here? Plenty food, plenty drink, plenty good time for everybody. You don’t find no better girls down there in Tunis. Why you so spiteful to me?”

I went out with Sergeant Transom through the wicket door. The corporals were out there already. Dooley was kneeling on the edge and thrashing the water with a plank.

“If only we’d been a minute earlier, sir,” he panted, “we’d have cotched them at it. It was the women that cut them loose and we just saw the skirts of them go flickering round the corner.”

The four boats were drifting fifty yards off and making all speed away from the mainland.

“This is deliberate sabotage,” I snapped. “Men have faced the firing squad for less.”

I marched straight back into the shed and put Madame Rosabella under close arrest. Corporal Dooley suggested I should have all the women searched for scissors, but I
deemed it unwise to allow any opportunity for incidental lechery.

“No bridge, no boats, sir,” said Sergeant Transom
cheerfully
. “Looks like we’re here for the night.”

“We can swim across.”

“Half of them are non-swimmers.”

“Then half can swim and half can come across on a line.”

“What about the guns? And our clothes. We going to attack General von Arnim mother-naked?”

“Our clothes can be towed over in a truck canopy. There’s a way of making it waterproof. I have the plan in my O. C. T. U. notes on River Crossings.”

“If you make English boys take off their clothes for swim,” screamed the furious Rosabella, “I tell my girls throw all clothes in the river.”

“If any of the lads take their trousers off, sir,” said
Corporal
Hink, “them floozies’ll go raving mad.”

“Disrobing may not be necessary,” I said. “The water may be shallow enough to wade through. I will make a
reconnaissance
. If it is wadeable I will take a line across myself.”

It was just falling first dark as I took off my jacket, shoes and socks, rolled up my trouser legs and lowered my foot down the side of that wharf and into the thick water. I would have taken off my trousers, but for all those women in the shed. Not, mark you, that in my case Corporal Hink’s
remark
was in any way applicable. I am not, thank God and a Methodist upbringing, that sort of chap. I had the line tied to my belt to leave my hands free…. I stretched my leg deeper and deeper, feeling for the bottom, and rolled my body as far as I could towards the edge …

For lack of eyewitness evidence to that effect, I will not formally say that someone pushed me—after all I was
surrounded
by my own trusted N. C. O.’s and Sergeant Transom himself was holding the line. Whether I felt a toe prise my buttock or whether I rolled over a stone on the wharf I do not know, but I suddenly found myself falling over the edge and floundering in the water…. I sank deep into the oily depths but never touched bottom … treading water against the drag of my clothing … dog-paddling with an overhead
action, I fought my way gasping to the surface and turned on my back.

“Hold on, sir,” shouted Sergeant Transom, “I’ll soon lug you in.”