How I Won the War (8 page)

I made no answer. I just couldn’t think of anything
soothing
to say. He raved at me for a long time and I stood there in silence and took it all on the bony part of the forehead. Captain Pebble took over when his president tired and told me at length that I needed pig-sticking. Lieutenant Comb spoke with such bitterness about his delayed marriage that I
could only presume his young lady was pregnant. Captain Tablet puffed messages of hate and threats of future revenge from underneath his moustache and murdered me with his eyes. And Private Juniper, when the court had finally settled down and awarded him 182 days, refused to have me inside his cell to discuss an appeal on the grounds that the members of the tribunal were overwrought and unjustly biased against him.

As I left the guard room, disappointed of course, but comforted by the knowledge that I had done my best for my client, Private Clapper accosted me.

“Begging your pardon, sir, and all that, but could I have a few words with you on a compassionate matter?”

“Certainly, Clapper,” I said. “What’s the trouble this time?”

“It’s my missus again, sir. They’re all after her again.”

“Not that insurance man? I thought we cleared him out when we lapsed the funeral policy.”

He smiled bravely.

“You done him, all right, sir. Settled his hash proper. It ain’t him this time. It’s the butcher.”

“The butcher? And do I take it that he is now … ahem … committing intimacy at your home address?”

“Yes, sir. Comes round regular every Tuesday with a bit of meat off the ration. Weakens her self-control with steak and kidney, he does, lures her with liver till she’s that hungry she don’t know what he’s up to. My mum’s told him off about it, but he don’t take no notice. He just won’t leave that poor little kid alone. It’s getting on my nerves, and if somebody don’t do something about it soon I’m going to finish up a raving lunatic in Runcorn like old Juniper in there. Is it right, sir, that’s all I want to know, for civilian butchers to go round getting their hoggins off soldiers’ wives while they’re away fighting gallantly for their King and Country …”

“Now don’t take on, Clapper. We’ll find a way to
discourage
the butcher, don’t you worry. Tell me, is there any chance that you could persuade your wife and your mum to become vegetarians?”

Before he could reply Sergeant Transom came up at the double.

“Urgent message from the company commander, sir.
Special
order group right away.”

I left Clapper considering female vegetarianism and
hurried
off to the company office.

“What’s it all about, Sergeant?”

“Don’t let on I told you, sir, because it’s supposed to be top secret, but we’re off next week.”

“Off where?”

“North Africa, for a quid.”

“How do you know?”

“The quartermaster’s just received five hundred pairs of snow boots and the M.O.’s lumbered up with fourteen crates of frostbite ointment. It’s us for the desert sands, sure as drainholes.”

And he was just about right.

A
FTER
BRINGING TWELVE PLATOON
ashore at Cleptha and exploiting the good fortune of our unopposed landing, I pushed on along the coast road towards Tunis as anxious as the rest of the chaps to get our first crack at the Boche. From the icy welcome we were given by the Colonial French some of them would clearly have preferred us to have been the Boche. Nevertheless, we conferred upon them in passing the benison of liberation which included among its favours the use of their daughters, the requisition of their wine, and the passage of tanks through their vineyards. The Musketeers pressed on in traditional style and we would have been in Tunis by Christmas had we not actually met the Germans on the way.

We then, of course, had to stop and withdraw a little; the rains came down, the mud squelched a foot deep, and the Army settled in to hold a line forty miles from Tunis and await attack weather and dry going in the spring. When the sun began to shine in March 1943, C Company was in the line just north of Medjez-el-Bab dug in around a farm on the
ungrateful slopes of Djebel Tokurna. Between the ribbons of rock the earth dried to grey dust, and but for a few stunted corktrees and twisted olives, the farmer grew nothing but stones. There was a riverless valley of similar fertility and broken by dry
wadis
,
which stretched for half a mile to the facing hills which were occupied by the Boche. Major Arkdust summoned his commanders to an order group in the scullery of the farmhouse.

“Preparations are being made at Army Headquarters for a big attack to break through to Tunis. Since the planning staff have to make twenty-six copies of everything, they can’t do the job in five minutes. It’ll take them even longer than usual here, of course, because the dear chaps have to work three hundred miles away in Algiers. Even at that distance, from the smell of gunpowder they sense that the Germans may also be planning an attack. They would like the earliest possible warning if this is so, in order, no doubt, that they may withdraw to previously prepared positions in Rio de Janeiro. We are, therefore, instructed during the interim period to intensify our patrolling with two objects—one, to become familiar with the terrain between ourselves and the enemy in preparation for our possible attack, and two, to observe the enemy and detect as early as possible any sign of impending counterattack. We will now take each platoon’s sector in detail …”

Later, back at my platoon headquarters in a disused pull-up for goats, Sergeant Transom surveyed the German hills through his binoculars.

“If I was Jerry I’d not bother coming across here. He’s got just as good a load of stones on his
djebel
as we’ve got on ours.”

“His main position is around that sugarloaf, Djebel Aboudir. From his side, whoever holds that has got the valley. Our main task is to reconnoitre a possible route up there. And to watch whether he shows any intention of coming down.”

He studied the spot for a while.

“The more you stare at it,” he said, “the less you see. It’s loaded with false crests and crisscrossed with
wadis.
We’ll have to patrol down at night to get any sort of idea.”

The flat central bed of the valley was commanded by both sides and there was no possibility of unscreened movement across it by day. On four nights we patrolled across, but could never get any real idea of the going around Djebel Aboudir. The first patrol caught a trip-wire, set up a Boche flare, and spent three hours crouching in a heaven-sent hole while spandaus plastered their neighbourhood. The second found a German patrol already working its beat; on the third we became hopelessly lost among the
wadis
at the foot of the hill and the last, which made some progress across them, was defeated by dawn and an apparently unscalable chasm.

A flexible mind is an essential attribute of a good
commander
. He should always be prepared to change his
approach
if his initial plans do not bring success. I sat down quietly and thought our problem through. Then I called my subordinate commanders together.

“It is clear,” I said, “that we are not going to find out much about Djebel Aboudir by night.”

“And nobody’s getting down there in one piece by day,” said Sergeant Transom.

“If someone could get into the valley in daylight and up to the gorge that stopped us last night, he’d probably be able to see the best way up the hill.”

“If he had any peepers left to see with,” said Corporal Dooley. “There’s not a scrap of cover between here and the
wadis.
”

“But he might get down there without cover,” I said “Some of
them
do.”

I pointed to an Arab riding his donkey along the track to our rear. His wife was walking in front with the luggage, a battle area reversal of the traditional order of march in order that the spouse could serve as a forward mine detector. The occasional itinerant Arab wandered into the no-man’s-land valley apparently to dig stones. Both sides being short of ammunition, we took little notice unless the wanderer turned towards either slope, when a burst over his head sent him scampering terror stricken over the rocks.

“Wogs may do it, sir,” said Corporal Hink, “but you’d never get nothing out of them. They don’t speak no known
language. And Jerry soon shoots them up if they make for the
djebel.”

“That’s because they do it in the open. There’s plenty of cover among the
wadis
that a trained soldier could use to get a decent O.P.”

“And how are you going to turn a Wog into a trained soldier?”

“I’m not. But we could turn a trained soldier into a Wog.”

They looked at me in amazement. Their untrained minds had not been able to make so swift an analysis of the situation.

“Do you mean, sir,” said Sergeant Transom, “that you want somebody to dress up as a Wog and do a Lawrence of Arabia?”

“Yes. One brave volunteer could then achieve more in ten minutes than ten nights of patrol.”

“One brave volunteer?”

“Yes. He should, of course, be an N.C.O. A private soldier would not be capable of the reconnaissance required.”

I waited confidently for all four of them to volunteer.

“I’d be in there like a shot,” said Corporal Hink, “but you’d never make a Wog out of me with this mop.” He ruffled up his Harpo mass of straw-blond hair.

“Same here,” said Corporal Globe, “but I can’t see across the room if I take off my glasses. And whoever saw a stone-digging Wog in horn-rimmed glasses?”

“And there’s no man I’d let be down there before me,” said Corporal Dooley, “if it weren’t that there’s six foot and over fifteen stone of me. There’s not one of these Wogs that weigh more than a whippet and Jerry would never believe the size of me in a burnous.”

“And I’d not be able to deceive them neither,” said
Sergeant
Transom standing as straight-backed as Queen Mary. “After twenty years of drill parade, I could never drop myself into the proper Wog civilian slouch. You could dress me up in all the bed sheets and bath towels in Bolton and the Boche’d still pick me out as a regular soldier. I’m afraid, sir, I just haven’t got the necessary histrionic ability. I have to confess I’m just not up to the job.” He shook his head in sad,
professional defeat. “And if you don’t mind my offering my opinion, sir, there’s only one person here with the right figure, acting ability, and natural bearing to play Lawrence of Arabia…. Just look at him, boys.”

And with a gesture of an impresario, he pointed at me.

“You’re dead right, Sergeant,” said Corporal Hink
admiringly
. “Just look at them noble, hawklike features. Spitting image of an Arab sheikh with anaemia.”

“And that carriage!” said Corporal Globe. “Just a pale-faced son of the desert. A bit of brown boot polish over your gob, sir, and you could have just stepped off a camel.”

“If Mrs. Lawrence ever see you sudden, sir, she’d reckon it was her own boy come back,” said Corporal Dooley. “When you get sunburned there’s going to be Bedouin bints from all over Arabia coming after you. No doubt about it, sir, you’re the dead ringer for the job.”

I must confess that I had cast myself in this particular operation as planner rather than executant, bearing in mind that my training and experience would be of more value to the war effort in interpreting the information than in
obtaining
it. However, now that I looked around my subordinates I could see that it would be difficult to make any of them into convincing Arabs. And since they drew attention to my resemblance to Lawrence of Arabia—I feel this was as much in reference to my qualities of leadership as it was to any mere physical similarity—and I had suggested the daylight idea, there was nothing else I could do but carry it out myself.

The following night I was fitted out in burnous and
headdress
, face and hands done brown with an infusion of
cigarettes
in tea, and equipped with an authentic North African stone-cultivating shovel.

“Anywhere from ten yards up you’d pass for a Wog wonderful, sir,” said Sergeant Transom. “You’ll be all right for Jerry but what’ll you do if you meet some other Wogs down in the
wadis
and they want to pass the time of day?”

“I will make out I’m deaf and dumb. That’s what spies always do.”

“And have you got that phosphorus bomb?”

“In my burnous pocket.”

“Good. Any trouble, you toss that and we’ll start piling down the smoke. And don’t try getting too close. Remember what happened to Lawrence of Arabia when he tried this gimmick on the Turks.”

I went down with a patrol two hours before dawn and hid up in the
wadis.
Tunisians are not, unfortunately, early risers and I had to wait till nine o’clock in the morning before making a move. I was out of view of Djebel Aboudir, screened by a precipitous bluff which bulged out at its foot, but I took the precaution of stopping every ten yards or so to dig a few innocent stones. Steadily, industriously, I worked my way along the sheltered flank of the bluff to its extremity, around which I would leave its cover and come into full view on the open plain. The last twenty yards ran through a rock-strewn gully backed by caves running under the bluff. I scrambled round a boulder as big as a bus and stopped dead in my nightgown as an Arab came round the corner ahead!

He stopped and looked at me. I applied my shovel to the ground vigorously. It was solid rock around me and the blade skated harmlessly back and forth with the sound of a cast iron zither. The Arab lowered his spade and cultivated stones at his own feet. He was luckier than I; he struck gravel.

We worked away for a minute or two and I watched him carefully out of the corner of my eye. He was a small, thin Wog and I calculated I could handle him if it came to fisticuffs. I moved a little closer till we were under ten yards apart and I had a patch of diggable scree to work on. He stopped shovelling and looked at me. Then he grinned, nodded his head happily and spread his arms in friendship. He waited with ear cocked for me to speak.

It was a good job I had thought the thing through to my deaf-and-dumb act. I placed the tips of my fingers on my lips, shook my head in hopeless negative and fanned my palms before my face like an umpire signalling a washout. I made the motions three times, then transferred to my ears and repeated the triple pantomime. In final emphasis I stood motionless, my spade at ease, and opened and closed my mouth soundlessly in the fashion of a fish mimic.

The Arab was at first taken aback by my actions, and
obvious alarm spread across his Semitic features. Then he got my message, his grin returned and he nodded
understandingly
. To my amazement he put his shovel to the ground and gave a repeat performance of my own mouth, ears, and goldfish charade. At the end of his act he pointed vigorously at me and then back at himself and I took his meaning…. He was deaf and dumb, too!

Accustomed as I am to find that anyone of whom I ask the way turns out to be stone-deaf or a stranger in the place, I must admit to being utterly surprised that on the only
occasion
I ever impersonated a dumb soundproof Arab in the interests of His Majesty’s Government, the first person I met under Djebel Aboudir turned out to be a Tunisian deaf-mute.

I returned to digging, to give myself time to think out my next move, and he did the same. His blade momentarily jammed against some obstinate strata, he slipped in effort and fell on his side. Quickly, he regained his feet, grinning
reassurance
…. I froze suddenly in mid-swing…. As his robe swung up in the tumble, a foot had shown clear of the skirt … and it was wearing a German field boot!

He was a Boche in disguise, bent on the same errand as myself … that’s why he’d used my deaf-and-dumb routine…. He couldn’t speak Arabic either…. I kept the shovel going with my left hand while I moved my right stealthily under my gown and drew my revolver…. I dropped the shovel and turned to face him.

“Hände
hoch!”
I snapped in all the German I could
muster
.
“Ich
habe
sie
covered from beneath my burnous.”

He spun round like a duellist and dropped into a fighting crouch.

“Hände
hoch!”
I repeated, bringing my pistol into view. “
Du
bist
mein
prisoner.”

Feverishly, as fast as his hands could flicker, he went through my speak-no-evil, hear-no-evil gestures … keeping up the bluff to the end…. His right hand came out of pantomime and down to his waist … he was reaching for his Luger, but it was under the robe.