Take or Destroy! (18 page)

After a while Taffy reappeared. He looked uncertain and uneasy as he stuck out his hand.

‘Shake, Tinner,’ he said.

Eva looked at him contemptuously. ‘ ‘Tes daft you be,’ he said.

The matter was dropped, and even forgotten as news came in that there was a hell of a battle working up round a place called Kidney Ridge. Nobody seemed to know where Kidney Ridge was, though, and a story was going round that the staff had had to send out a survey party to find out.

Unable to pass on the truth, Hockold was miserable for his men. Having steeled himself for the battle, he also felt let down, annoyed at having to make the psychological adjustment, yet aware also of a sneaking sense of relief and joy that for a few more days he was to be allowed to live and breathe, and see the sun and the stars.

A film show was hurriedly summoned from base but it turned out to be Gloria Swanson and was so old it broke down nine times and everything appeared to be taking place in a downpour. The next morning there was another, bigger ‘Balls to Montgomery’ in the latrines and from the tents came the sound of Waterhouse’s voice raised in raucous defiance -- not just of Montgomery or the Eighth Army, but of Hockold, too, and Murdoch and all the officers and sergeants, King’s Regulations, and everybody in authority right down to the man who fought the monkey in the dustbin.

‘Let cowards scoff ad traitors sneer,
We’ll keep the bloody red flag flyig ‘ere!’

Only Fidge was satisfied. If they weren’t to be flung into battle, he decided, there was no point in bolting towards the rear and he settled back to enjoy the rest.

A few prisoners appeared, marching east, slovenly files of weary men with their arms in splints and field dressings on their faces, covered with dust and blood and wearing their greatcoats like cloaks. Most of them were Italians, disillusioned, undersized men clutching cardboard suitcases and bottles of chianti; the white towels they’d waved in surrender still round their necks. A few were Germans, however, and it made a change to see the master race being put in the bag, arrogant bastards every one of them, singing ‘Wir fahren gegen England’ at the tops of their voices to show they didn’t give a monkey’s for the whole of the Eighth Army and certainly not for 97 Commando.

Vehicles and tanks were still moving forward and the whole of the western horizon was a mounting cloud of smoke and dust. The guns were still rattling and muttering, but further away now because the army was moving northwards; news came that when the panzers had switched the direction of their counter-attacks up there they had lost fifty tanks at once. According to the griff, everybody at army headquarters was delighted with the way things were going. But if the generals were happy, 97 Commando wasn’t, and being held back at the last moment left them deflated and angry.

In the office, the question that occupied everybody’s mind was, should they start training again? Should they risk making the men stale and bored with the whole thing by going over it once more, or should they simply let them rest?

By that evening, Hockold could wait no longer and, climbing into the Humber brake, he went to find out for himself what was expected of them.

Headquarters was throbbing with activity and Montgomery was in conference with his divisional commanders, so that it was Brigadier Torrance he saw in the flapping gaslit gloom of a marquee.

‘When are we going in, sir?’ he demanded.

‘No idea.’ Torrance shrugged.

‘Are things going wrong?’

Torrance’s eyebrows shot up. ‘Good God, no!’ he said. ‘Anything but. We’re a touch behind schedule, that’s all. There’s a hell of a barney still going on round Kidney Ridge and we’ve switched 9th Australian Div. up there. We knew it would take a few days, and it is. We’ve got Jerry in a salient near the coast and we’re going to trap him there. Plans are being made for the break-out - code name Supercharge. That’s when we’ll need you.’

‘I can’t keep my chaps up to battle pitch for days, sir,’ Hockold protested.

‘Can’t you?’ Torrance’s reply reminded him how distant headquarters remained, even with the best will in the world, from the men who did the fighting and the dying. ‘In that case we’ll have to find someone who can.’

When no word came the following day, Hockold was forced to decide that training should start again and they went at it sullenly, not trying very hard because they felt nobody cared and it was just army bull to keep them busy. To be despised was intolerable and a bitter sense of resentment developed. If the Eighth Army wanted to do the whole bloody thing on their own, well, let ‘em! The great victory everybody was talking about didn’t seem to concern them and they even started to wonder if there would be a victory at all.

Determined not to put his back into things, one man timed a jump badly and broke his ankle. Two more went down with dysentery -- ‘Can’t ‘ave ‘em stopping to ask the way to the bogs,’ Bunch observed -- while a huge sand sore on Tit Willow’s knee made it obvious that he, too, should be out of the running.

‘That thing’s not healing,’ Hickey, the American doctor Cadish had produced, pointed out. ‘I think you’d better go to hospital.’

Nothing changed except that Lieutenant Dysart’s corpses had been placed on blocks of ice in the hold of
Umberto.
The crew, being sailors and superstitious, didn’t like it much. The sun shone. The flies persisted,

‘I found one in me tea yesterday,’ Waterhouse said. ‘It was as big as a bloody midget. I expected it to adswer me back when I took it out.’

The desert looked as arid, brown and boring as it always had. Headquarters, concerned with the rings and arrows chalked with chinagraph on their situation maps, seemed to have forgotten them entirely; they felt orphaned, despised, unwanted. The whole bloody army was involved, it seemed, except 97 Commando.

With the exception of Fidge, Taffy Jones and one or two more, they were almost suicidal by the evening of the 28th when, with the battle five days old, word came that Cut-Price was on after all, that this time they really were on their way. The news arrived by staff car.

‘Supercharge starts in the early hours of November 2nd,’ Hockold was told. ‘You embark tomorrow. We want you to create as much confusion as possible.’

Hockold drew a deep breath. The words seemed a death sentence. A law of averages existed in the desert and he had occasionally felt that with two slight wounds he had drawn his share of hurt. This time, though, it was different. This time, it was as if warnings had been transmitted to him, loud and clear, to prepare himself for oblivion. He stood stock-still for a moment, seeing once more with a terrifying clarity that tormented image of himself with its bloodied head. Then he drew a deep painful breath and turned slowly to Amos. ‘Better let the chaps know,’ he said quietly.

There were worried men in Qaba as well by now. With the battle shifting across their front, there was even an element of fear, because they knew better than anyone how important the fuel they were struggling to unload was to Field Marshal Rommel.

They had known fuel was important long before he’d disappeared to Germany for treatment for his liver complaint, but as the four supply ships had crept in, hearts had lifted because, with what was already in the dumps, there was now enough for the panzers to fall on any attack the Eighth Army chose to mount. But then, for God’s sake, after dark on the evening of the 23rd, there’d been one great, white, Godalmighty flash and a roar along the front, and the shells had come down along the whole line. Instead of the Afrika Korps falling on the Eighth Army, the Eighth Army had fallen on the Afrika Korps!

Almost immediately the telephone had rung in Hochstatter’s headquarters. Hochstatter answered it and Nietzsche, his head down over the plan of Qaba, heard his irritation.

‘Of course we’re ready! Do you think we’re blind and deaf and stupid?’

The following day, the 24th, the first wounded had started to find their way back from the front. The guns hadn’t stopped for a minute and it was said now that whole squadrons of British tanks were getting through, charging like horsemen with pennants flying and guns going, and that the line had been overrun, with the British infantry bursting through the minefields, indifferent to their casualties.

The explanation came in the evening: General Stumme had been dead since early morning when his car had run into British fire while out on reconnaissance. When he had jumped out to scuttle for safety, he had fallen dead of heart failure. His place had been taken by von Thoma, a lean, scarred, experienced old warrior who, thank God, claimed to be satisfied with the situation.

Then, on the 25th, to everybody’s joy Rommel himself came back and that evening he actually appeared in Qaba in person. Private Bontempelli, sweating by the water’s edge, saw him step from the small dusty car that was taking him to his forward headquarters; a wiry, energetic man holding his arms straight down at his sides and standing with his stomach thrust out as he stared at the supply ships and bellowed his rage at Colonel Hochstatter.

‘I’ve been pleading for this for months,’ he yelled. ‘All the time I’ve been in Berlin I’ve been begging for a drop in the ocean that’s been going to Russia.’

He wore his motor cyclist’s goggles over the high-peaked cap with the eagle on it, a simple tunic, shorts and yellow boots like Bontempelli’s. When he took off his cap, Bontempelli could see the white mark against his sunburned face and a vein bulging in his neck as he shouted.

As he drove from the harbour, Rommel’s pug-nosed face was a great deal more cheerful. ‘With these supplies,’ he said, ‘I think we can trade the British punch for punch.’

Almost immediately a notice went up signed ‘Erwin Rommel,’ cancelling all leave, all days off, all breaks for meals, all sleeping, even all breathing, and then the panic started. For ten days Hochstatter had been waiting for instructions, begging again and again for pioneer companies, for more men to replace the slow-witted Italians and half-hearted Arabs, for transport, tarpaulins and drivers - even for his missing balloons and searchlights. No one had taken the slightest notice but now, at last, clear orders had been given - by Rommel himself.

To Hochstatter’s delight a signal arrived at once to warn him that a convoy of lorries would appear the following morning to start moving the petrol, and he called Hrabak and Nietzsche into his office and offered them a drink before they got down to’ organizing their working parties. But as dawn came up over the desert on the 26th, and they stared towards Mersa Matruh and Bardia for the first sign of the cloud of dust that would herald the arrival of the convoy, Tarnow brought in a message to the effect that the previous day’s signal had been cancelled.

A coffee cup went over and crumbs burst from Hrabak’s mouth as he exploded into rage. But while they were still trying to contact headquarters, he discovered that the lorries had been diverted by some desperate panzer general to carrying supplies from the forward dumps to his hard-pressed tanks, and for two hours Hochstatter and von Steen shouted into telephones demanding help.

‘For God’s sake,’ one officer shouted back, ‘we need the damned lorries here! I can actually see the Tommies from where I’m standing! Any minute now they’ll be driving down the telephone!’

By midday, to everybody’s surprise, because they’d been expecting it for days to fade out as usual, the British attack had been stepped up again, and a nagging worry started. With the faith they’d had in Rommel, they’d expected his mere presence to stem the tide, but there were even rumours now that he’d been killed and that they were burning papers in Fuka and even as far back as Mersa Matruh.

They were still wondering if the lorries would come when Zohler arrived to snatch away the Grant tank he’d given them, the two Honeys, the tankmen, even the shattered Mark III.

‘Is it bad?’ Nietzsche asked.

Zohler pulled a face. ‘Erwin’s anxious,’ he said. ‘But he’s not contemplating a defeat.’

They were still worried by the news when another signal arrived, snatching away most of the pioneers and every one of their lorries.

‘For God’s sake,’ Hrabak stormed. ‘We need them! Is the army being run by zombies?’

The troops, brought to a high degree of skill, were transported to Alexandria.

When they learned at Gott el Scouab that they were going after all, they nearly lifted the roof off the desert.

As Hockold’s car was seen leaving the camp, little groups of men began to drift towards headquarters, all trying to look as though they were doing a job but every one of them waiting to catch the first whiff of griff. They were all aware that Erwin’s Boys were having difficulty hanging on and that a final hard blow now would knock them clean off-balance. His communications ravaged, the sand drifting over the bodies of his dead, Erwin was ripe for a big new attack if one could only be mounted in time. From being brittle and precarious at the beginning, the situation had strengthened and there was a certainty now that victory was in the air. The Mark IVs, feared ever since Gazala, had been smashed to pieces by gunners who, red-eyed with peering and croaking from the heat and the dust, had not given an inch.

The air was full of speculation. Huge traffic congestions were building up to the north as units swung to newly allotted routes and the armour flowed forward, choking on its own exhaust fumes.

The dead were laid in their dusty graves, split sandbags replaced, fresh piles of shining shells built behind the guns, and as the scrap iron was towed away to give a clear field of fire, the army prepared itself for the next trial of strength.

As Murdoch appeared with a sheaf of papers in his hand, Rabbitt began to signal with his arms. ‘Fetch ‘em out!’ he shouted. ‘Fetch ‘em out!’

Sergeants went down the lines of tents, slapping the slack canvas so that men came running. A few came from the cookhouse and a few from the Naafi, two or three from the latrines, one even from St Martin’s-in-the-Sands where he’d been having a quick grumble to God about the way he was being mucked about. They gathered round Murdoch, eager, curious, their sullenness gone, Rabbitt pushing them into a half-circle.