The Sword of Fate (17 page)

Daphnis thought that was a splendid idea, as it would at least assure her people that she was not being carried off by a penniless adventurer.

Once we were in the city I had the inspiration of driving her to the back of the big building which housed the Greek Relief Fund, so that she was able to slip into it and walk straight out to the front where we knew that her car would already be waiting for her. She had to abandon the huge box of chocolates, otherwise there would have been inconvenient questions as to where she had got them, but she took the big bow of ribbon off the box, kissed it and stuffed in my pocket to be, as she said, ‘a talisman’ for me during our few weeks’ separation.

There was a last hurried kiss snatched in the car, then she was gone, running lightly across the pavement and into a dark entrance.

At the hotel I packed as though I were moving in a dream, and that night I took the road to the west in a haze of delirious happiness.

Immediately I reached my unit I sat down and wrote a long letter to Essex Pasha. Each day afterwards I spent every leisure moment in writing reams to my dearest one, and on the fifth day
I received a letter from her. Almost bursting with excitement I tore it open and hastily scanned the first page. Joy of joys! Everything was all right. Daphnis’ mother had been difficult at first, but old Diamopholus had come to the rescue. He had had a long talk with Essex Pasha and afterwards succeeded in convincing his wife that, from the worldly point of view, I was not really a bad match for even a millionaire’s stepdaughter. From that point everything had gone swimmingly. They were already discussing the wedding dress and the bridesmaids’ frocks. The next step was for me to let her know the date that I could get leave.

Two days later I was able to let her have it. The Brigadier had granted me a fortnight as from November the 26th.

On the following Monday I had another letter from Daphnis. The invitations were now being printed, and all the preparations were going forward for the wedding. Once the opposition had been overcome her whole family had been wonderfully human, petting her, spoiling her, and deriving a reflected joy from her romance. She wrote that she was living now only for the moment when, in the sight of God and Man, on Wednesday, November the 27th, she would become my adoring wife. But the accursed Sword of Fate still lay between us. On November the 12th I was taken prisoner by the Italians.

My approaching marriage to Daphnis had put it completely out of my mind that a fortnight earlier, just before Italy had invaded Greece and I had applied for my forty-eight hours’ special leave, I had expressed great keenness to take part in one of the raids that our forward elements occasionally made across No Man’s Land. Although we had been at war with Italy for over five months, my own battalion had not yet seen an Italian except for a few prisoners who had been captured in raids and enemy airmen who bailed out at the sight of the R.A.F. It was sheer over-zealousness on my part to witness some actual fighting which led to my grievous undoing.

A Coldstream captain named Archie Melrose had been dining with us at the battalion H.Q. His company was holding a chain of advance posts and it was when I complained that we seemed much more likely to die of boredom than from enemy action that he said at once:

“If you’re all that anxious to have a crack at the Italians come up and spend a day or two with me, and we’ll take you along on our next show.”

As battalion interpreter I had no routine duties which would be seriously affected by my absence, so it was only a matter of my obtaining ‘Long Willie’s’ formal consent, and he gave it at once. Soon after I got back from leave I was told that it had been fixed up that I should join Melrose on the early morning of November the 11th, and of course it was too late to back out then, even if I had wanted to.

Long before it was light on the Sunday my batman roused me, and as soon as I was fully awake I realised that there was no time to be lost if I was to catch the early morning supply column, which was affording me transport up to the advance unit.

When I arrived Melrose introduced me to his brother officers, who proved a very friendly crowd, and I soon settled in. The padre came up to hold a short Armistice Day service, which was rather impressive out there in the desert, and after that I was on the move most of the time, accompanying Melrose on his rounds from post to post, openly admiring the discipline and turn-out which the Guards maintained even in that desolate waste.

That evening Melrose told me that he had been ordered to send out a reconnaissance party towards the oasis of Bir Fuad, which lay about seventy miles inland along the caravan track leading from Mersa Matruh to Siwa. Most reconnaissance work was done by the light tanks of the Cavalry, but their numbers were limited, and now that the African campaigning season was upon us, the General Staff were calling for more frequent and thorough reports upon the enemy’s strength and dispositions.

The party was to consist of six Bren-gun carriers under the command of a lieutenant, and it was to take off at sundown so that advantage could be taken of the darkness before the moon got up, and scouting enemy aircraft would not see the clouds of sand which the caterpillar tractors churned up whenever they went fast and far. Melrose said that here was my chance for a little fun if I cared to make one of the party.

Naturally I accepted, and after a high tea it was time for us to make our preparations. Gerald Aitken was the name of the
lieutenant who had been selected, and he was a rather a quiet young man with a little dark moustache. He and I went out first to see that everything was shipshape, then Melrose inspected the party in the weird reddish light of a marvellous sunset and we set off.

From time to time we were challenged by our own outposts, but Aitken had the password and we bumped on over the hard stony ground, first through the short afterglow, then into the night. There was no visible track to guide us, and after dark Aitken directed the party by a compass bearing on the Pole Star. For most of the way the desert was quite flat, but now and again it was broken by shelf-like ridges leading down to long depressions, the beds of which were crusted with salt. These depressions were extremely tricky to cross in mechanised vehicles, so each of them held us up for a considerable time.

At about half past ten the moon got up and an hour later its pallid, unearthly light made the desert almost as bright as day. When we reached the next depression Aitken ordered a halt in the bottom of it and told me that he intended to sit tight there until the moon was within an hour of setting, as he did not want some desert patrol to spot us and get back to give warning of our approach.

All of us were wearing our greatcoats, as now that we were well into November the nights in the desert were bitterly cold, but we did not dare to light a fire for fear of giving our position away to any enemy scouts or aircraft which might be within sight of us. However, hot strong tea had been sent out with us in special containers, and very welcome it was. With it we ate some of the sandwiches we had brought in our haversacks, and whiled away the time as well as we could by swapping yarns.

It was getting on for three when we moved on again and just before dawn the order was given to halt once more in another big depression. Aitken said that if his compass bearings had been accurate we should now be about twenty miles north-west of Bir Fuad, the neighbourhood we had been ordered to reconnoitre, and after camouflaging the Bren carriers with their rag-bedecked netting we settled down to wait for daylight.

The sun rose dead behind us over Cairo, although of course between us and the city there lay three hundred miles of uninhabitable desert. It so happened that I was one of the very few people who had ever crossed that desert. In the early months of 1938 I had spent several weeks there, hunting for the treasure which had been abandoned by the lost legions of Cambyses when they
foundered in that waterless wilderness, and not one of them ever got back to report the terrible fate by death from thirst which had overtaken his thirty thousand companions. Even the Arabs, who called it the ‘Sea of Sand’, had never crossed it, and only the invention of motor vehicles, which could travel great distances without requiring fresh supplies of water, enabled us to operate there now with any safety.

The sunrise was a miracle of flaming colour, but all of us were used to that, so we paid little attention to it and employed ourselves without delay, now that the light had come, in fulfilling the purpose of the expedition. It was essential that the carriers should be left concealed in the hollow, as otherwise they would have been spotted from a considerable distance or by any enemy ’plane that chanced to come over. But small groups of khaki figures are extraordinarily hard to pick out against a background of sand and limestone, particularly if they remain motionless, so our job was to select points of vantage and scan the desert through binoculars for any signs of movement; then if a small enemy force appeared we were to engage it in the hope of securing prisoners, but if a large force came into view we were to remain dead still, secure in the knowledge that unless it came within a quarter of a mile of us it would pass us by unnoticed.

Having detailed several parties, Aitken gave me two men and asked me to climb out of the depression towards the west, where I was to take up my position on the highest ground that I could find within a square mile of the depression’s edge; then to sit tight there until further orders, or I spotted anything which justified sending one of the men back with a report.

Half an hour later the three of us found a rocky cleft upon the near slope of a valley beyond the depression where our main party had halted, and we decided that this would be a good place from which to keep watch. While the lance-corporal, who was one of my companions, chose a position for the Bren gun, I scanned the monotonous yellow-brown landscape with my field-glasses for as far as I could see, which was no great way ahead but a considerable distance to either side.

Perhaps I ought to have crossed the valley and chosen a place on the next ridge, from which I could have seen much further ahead and so had earlier warning of any enemy approaching in force; but the shallow dip was the best part of half a mile across, and to have done so would have been to exceed the distance which Aitken had laid down for the area in which I was to choose a position.

It was a little after ten o’clock in the morning when I caught the warning blast of a whistle on my right. One of our other pickets had evidently spotted something, and next moment I was blowing my own whistle for all I was worth. A line of medium tanks had suddenly popped up on the skyline of the ridge opposite and was now bumping its way clumsily but swiftly down into the valley straight towards us.

It was incredibly ill luck that in all that vast area a formation of tanks should come blundering right into our midst, but that was what had happened. They could not possibly pass without seeing us, and if we had broken cover we could never have run the distance back to the shelter of the depression before the tanks had either caught up with us or sent machine-gun bullets spattering through our backs.

The neighbouring picket commander had realised our desperate plight as soon as he saw the tanks, and, since the Bren-gun carriers could not possibly take on such a vastly superior enemy, blown his whistle as a warning to them to get out. The one chance for Aitken was instant retreat, as if he got away at once he would probably be able to save the bulk of his party through the superior speed of his vehicles.

As the tanks came over the crest they made the sort of target that a gunner dreams about, but unfortunately the Bren was the only gun we had and that was much too light to smash a well-armoured tank. However, there was always a chance that some of the bullets might penetrate the observation slits, and my lance-corporal was already blazing away with the Bren while the Guardsman who was with us hastily opened up the spare ammunition containers.

I could hear the bullets ring as they smacked on to the nearest tank, but it came steadily up the slope. Then one of its machine-guns began to chatter. The lance-corporal half sprang into the air, gave a single wavering cry and slumped down again, blood gushing from a ghastly wound where half a dozen of the enemy’s bullets had torn open his neck.

I grabbed the Bren and loosed off with it. I’m a pretty good shot, but I think it was luck which aided my aim in the wild excitement of that moment. A spate of bullets from the Bren spattered on to the tank all round its forward observation slit. Some of them must have gone through and killed the driver as the tank suddenly lurched sideways and came to a halt.

But my triumph was short-lived. Another tank, fifty yards to my left, had now come level with us. Seeing that its companion
had been crippled it swung its cannon into action. I saw the first shell burst with a blinding flash. Bits of it hissed through the air and clattered on the rock, while a big puff of evil-smelling smoke billowed out then hung, almost unmoving, in the air. The second shell must have burst within a few feet of us, but I did not see it. I only felt myself lifted bodily, then hurled back to earth. The breath was driven right out of my body; there was a sharp pain in my temple as my head hit a rock and I passed out.

How long I was unconscious I have no idea, but it would not have been for very long because the sun was still nearly overhead when I came to. Cautiously I examined myself and found that, apart from a severe bruising, I was quite all right. The Guardsman also appeared only to have been temporarily knocked out. His face was quite calm and he looked as though he was asleep, but the moment I started to shake him I realised that he was stone dead. A small fragment of shell had entered his back and gone right through his heart.

Taking every precaution against again being surprised by the enemy, I crawled back to the lip of the depression. There was no sign of the Bren-gun carriers or the tanks, so presumably Aitken had succeeded in getting away. The next thing to find out was if I were stranded alone out there, or if there were other survivors from our small isolated parties. I blew a blast upon my whistle and repeated it several times but got no answer. Then a few minutes later a head with a crop of bright ginger curls popped up over a rock and its blue-eyed owner grinned at me.