At this, the briefing breaks into muttered indignation. For my part, though by war’s end I will have participated in a number of such assemblies, during which outlandish assignments are imparted with absolutely straight faces, and during which I invariably feel my blood run cold, I cannot fail to be astonished at the keen and cheerful fervour with which this near suicidal mission is embraced.
“Rotten luck,” says Mayne. “The air force boys have beaten us this time. Still, our turn should be damn brisk sport. Don’t give up hope, lads. I’ve seen these aviation types come up empty more than once. If they kick it, we’ll get our shot.”
The briefing breaks up in high spirits. The men, who all know each other from their units and from prior operations, move off into their various groups to work out the details of their individual assignments. I find myself alone, picturing in my mind the vast expanse of the Western Desert and the tens of thousands of soldiers, tanks and guns of the Afrika Korps. Is it just me, or is this operation as preposterous as it sounds?
I turn to the Kiwi sergeant, Collier, who has been perched on an ammunition crate beside me throughout the briefing. He looks the athletic sort, who on civvy street has probably been a rugby player or mountaineer, as so many NZedders are.
“What do you make of this show, Sergeant?”
The New Zealander turns to me with a grin. “Sounds like a dodgy do to me, sir.”
10
THAT AFTERNOON comes the load-out.
Orders are issued at 1400. All passes are cancelled and all mail and phone privileges cut off. Instructions to the patrol commanders are to outfit their vehicles with fuel, oil, water, rations and ammunition for thirty days.
T3 patrol—the one I’ll ride with—has at the last instant lost its commander, Lieutenant Warren, to an emergency appendectomy. Sergeant Collier is placed in command. The eleven other men are all New Zealanders, except Miller, the medical orderly, who’s a Yorkshireman from Bradford. We have five SAS troopers who will travel with us.
The trucks are loaded in a yard that’s off-limits to all but LRDG personnel. The men are given the afternoon and night to pack the vehicles; I keep close but out of the troopers’ way.
In honour of the New Zealand composition of T3 patrol, the trucks all bear Maori names. I will ride in Te Aroha IV. Patrol commanders’ vehicles are American Willys jeeps, reserved for the LRDG from the rare and highly prized few that Eighth Army has managed to lay hands on, so that these officers can scout ahead over rough going. The other vehicles are all full-size 30-hundred-weight trucks. The crew of Te Aroha IV, or “Four” as she is called, are me, Trooper L. G. Oliphant as driver, Corporal Jack Standage as one gunner and Trooper “Punch” Danger (pronounced DAN-gurr, with a hard “g”) as the other. We’ll have one SAS man, Sergeant Pokorny, as a passenger; he’ll handle his own weapon, a Bren gun. Sergeant Wannamaker commands Te Rangi V, the wireless vehicle, with Trooper Frank Grainger as his operator, gunner Marks and fitter Durrance. Corporal Conyngham runs the weapons truck, Tirau VI, with gunners Midge and Hornsby and the medical orderly, Miller. They’ll carry two SAS commandos each. The LRDG men are all New Zealanders, as I said, and all, except two privates, Holden and Davies, older than I by at least seven years. In civilian life they are farm appraisers, stockmen, fitters and joiners. They have families and own farms. Oliphant’s family’s is ten thousand acres.
The load-out takes place under the eaves of the motor shop. Supplies are laid out on tarpaulins alongside. Wilder and Easonsmith oversee the labours. Every requisitioned item seems to be on hand, with the exception of T3’s petrol, which has been delayed coming from the quartermaster. T1 and R1 have theirs. I watch Easonsmith’s and Wilder’s patrols finish up and tarp over (the covers are not for rain but sand and dust), then roll the trucks into their parking slots, ready for tomorrow. Our fuel, T3’s, still hasn’t shown up. It’s dark now. At last our lorry arrives, a White 10-tonner, stacked to the gunwales with petrol tins. Our fellows offload the boxes labelled
SHELL
MT
BENZINE
This White and a Mack NR9 will accompany the patrols for the first 250 miles, acting as rolling petrol dumps.
A 30-hundredweight truck is supposed to take a load no greater than a ton and a half. Added leaf springs can beef that up to 3,300 pounds, though Collier tells me that at a pinch he’s packed on as much as two tons. You load a truck with petrol tins first. T1 and R1 patrols’ fuel comes in tight, leakproof jerry cans, captured from the Germans and valued almost as highly as U.S. jeeps—forty-five per truck. Eight jerry cans apiece go to Wilder’s and Easonsmith’s jeeps and to the three others set aside for Major Mayne, for his infiltration teams and for Popski. But the Q has ballsed-up T3 patrol’s fuel ration; instead of jerry cans we get “flimsies,” the notorious four-gallon containers made of metal so thin you can practically puncture it with a fingernail. Flimsies come two to a case, packed in cardboard. Of seventy-six that Collier’s crew take down from the Mack, twenty-one are leaking at the seams; eleven have drained half to nil. “A lot of work with the funnel,” says our sergeant. He and I conspire. The shortage is made up by a bit of pillaging, in the form of three forty-four-gallon drums, which Punch and Grainger under my direction spirit out from the shop stores and which all three of us roll up ramps in the dark into the trailers. The solution is so satisfactory that we help ourselves to two more drums, leaving the piles of leaking flimsies for the quartermaster. We stow the drums aft of the cab; counting the topped-up twenty-gallon fuel tank, each truck is now loaded with about a hundred and eighty gallons, or a little over half a ton.
The remaining two thousand pounds is water, rations and cooking gear, POL (petroleum, oil, lubricants), ammunition, bedding and kit, sand-channels and mats, wireless, batteries, and guns and men themselves. In addition, for this operation only, each patrol commander’s truck will carry a short-range “A” radio, like the kind used in tanks. The “A” set uses voice, not code, and will be employed to communicate among patrol commanders and with the jeeps of the SAS infiltration teams. The fitter’s truck carries spare axles and radiators, extra clutch plates, steering rods and assemblies, and all manner of hoses, belts and fittings. Twenty-six tins of petrol are stowed inboard directly behind each cab in four rows of six each across with the remainders on top. Directly aft of this stands the mount for the Browning. Pipe stanchions at the four corners of the truckbed provide supplementary mounts. Ammunition boxes form a floor for the gunner to stand on, with a wall of tins rising directly behind the petrol. In the gaps go sleeping tarps, coats, caps, web gear and each man’s personal bedding, rucksack and bale-out kit. Rations and cooking gear (and the ceramic jugs of rum marked “SRD,” which stands for “Supply Reserve Depot” but which all hands translate as “Seldom Reaches Destination”) are secured just inside the tailboard, so that the cook, or whoever is acting in such capacity, can drop the plank and get at the “conner” fast when men are hungry. Drinking water is carried in tins identical to those used for petrol, with their caps soldered shut to prevent leakage, and marked with a big white X. “This,” declares Sergeant Wannamaker, “is so that officers can tell which tin to drink out of.”
A Mills bomb is what the Yanks call a hand grenade. Oliphant and Holden pack these for all four of T3’s vehicles. The elements go in separate boxes—explosives in one, fuses and detonators in another. The boxes are wood, which Oliphant explains is handy, as we can break them up to make fires for a brew-up of tea.
By ten at night the trucks are loaded. A last-minute change in orders pulls Popski and his Arabs from the operation; rumour says they will kick off with Tinker, when he returns with T2 patrol, on a different mission. Wrapped and tarped, the vehicles glisten like Christmas packages. I have only helped a little but I feel proud and satisfied. A quick feed, a smoke with Collier and Oliphant, and I’m off for the bunk.
I can’t sleep. Midnight comes and goes. I’m thinking about my shaving kit. Why have I packed a razor? There’ll be no water to sh
ave with. Hairbrush? Pistol? Saved weight would add a pint of petrol. Books. Those I will need. I lay out half a dozen, including Paradise Lost, The Sun Also Rises, and Stein’s manuscript, which I carry for luck. At 0245 I’m up and pacing. I shave one last time, dress and start on foot for the motor yard.
The vehicle park is blacked out, not even electric torches permitted. Desert nights are bright, though; the trucks cast shadows, even in starlight. Four new vehicles have arrived since I went for dinner—German Kübelwagen jeeps with camouflage paint and Afrika Korps markings. No one has told me about these; they must be for the SAS infiltration teams. I walk round the trucks. You can smell the gunblack on the Brownings and the Vickerses, even under their canvas covers. The vehicles stink of petrol and rubber, motor oil and grease. The metal gets cold in the night; condensation beads on the trucks’ mud-guards and trickles down their frames. Along their flanks ride the perforated steel sand-channels. Beside these are mounted the sectioned masts for the Wyndom aerials; spades and axes; extra leaf springs. Clearance between tyres and mud-guards had been over eighteen inches when we started; now, with the load, it’s under six. No doors on these trucks, just canvas dust flaps, and no roofs or windscreens except open-car-style “aeros,” covered in canvas so their glass doesn’t flash in the sun. Seats and steering wheels are swathed in blankets to keep off the wet tonight and the sun tomorrow. The trucks have no ignition keys; you just step on the starter. I’m finishing a walk-round of Te Aroha IV when a lanky form materialises from the corner of the shop.
It’s Easonsmith. For an instant I consider ducking from sight; he’s such a daunting presence to me. He spots me, though, and comes forward. “Can’t sleep, eh, Chapman?”
“No, sir.”
“Neither can I. Never can, the night before a push-off.”
We exchange good-mornings and chat informally for several moments. He asks about my notes and orders. Do I have everything I need? Do I understand what will be required of me?
I assure him I do.
“Yes,” says Easonsmith, “I always lied too.”
Jake regards me thoughtfully. He wears a Hebron fleece greatcoat; I’m shivering in a new Tropel.
“I’m glad we’ve run into each other, Chapman. I have something to say to you.”
I brace for the lecture about Special Operations being different from the regular army, which I have heard already half a dozen times from Kennedy Shaw, Willets and Enders and the other instructors. But that’s not what Jake has in mind.
“You’re in a bit of a ticklish spot here, Chapman—an officer in a patrol whose commander is an NCO. I mean Sergeant Collier. It’s unfortunate, Lieutenant Warren being taken ill so suddenly, but there you have it. Collie, I assure you, is top-shelf, an old desert hand. You understand that I can’t place you, a seconded officer with no inner-desert experience, in command of a specialised unit whose men have served together under this particular leader for over a year. As you know, we have an RAF officer in Captain Wilder’s patrol; I’ve handled his placement the same as yours.”
I assure Jake that I understand.
“That being said, you are by no means a mere passenger.” He draws on his pipe, which he holds upside-down for blackout protocol, and nods towards the desert. “The one thing you can count on in operations like these is that something will go wrong. When it does, a second balls-up invariably follows. Before you know it, all your cherished plans have unravelled down to the ground.”
I respond yessir.
“You think I haven’t been watching you, Chapman, but I have. I’ve been waiting for you to find your place. Sink or swim.”
I tell him I’m swimming as hard as I can.
“Try swimming less hard.”
Footfalls sound from the far side of the vehicle park—Major Mayne and Mike Sadler, the SAS navigator, come to give a once-over to their vehicles. Jake greets them across the space with a half-salute, then turns back to me.
“Hell could break loose on this operation, Chapman. Be ready when you’re needed.”
I acknowledge, with my bones rattling inside my light coat.
“Here,” says Jake, “you’re freezing.”
He strips off his greatcoat and wraps it round my shoulders. “Don’t worry,” he says. “I’ve got another.”
Now I’m thoroughly confused. Am I in favour or on the mat?
Easonsmith beats the bowl of his pipe against the heel of his boot, then grinds out the embers in the dust. He straightens, ready to move off.
“Don’t mind this little lecture, Chapman. Keyed up, that’s all. Chattering as much for my own benefit as for yours.”
He raps me once on the shoulder, then nods towards the paperback in my pocket.
“What’re you reading there?”
“You mean this book, sir?”
Jake smiles. “You do read, don’t you Chapman?”
With sinking heart, I confess to ploughing through Bertie Nevins’ The Chrome Castle. Detective pulp. Absolute drivel.
“Excellent!” declares my commander. “For a moment I was afraid you might say Livy or Lucretius.”
Book Three
The Inner Desert
11
I’M LOOKING OVER the windscreen-less bonnet. The speedometer reads 35. As far as sight can carry, the plain is flat as a billiard table and white as an ocean of salt. No need for goggles; the heavy sand grains raised by our tyres are whipped away by the wind before they get a foot high. The air beating past our brows is pellucid. Adam himself breathed nothing purer. Were it noon, we’d be squinting across the surface of a mirage lake, with heat-shimmer rising fifty feet into the air. But the trucks can’t travel at noon; the shadow is too short to give a bearing on the sun compass. The lads lie up instead in the shade beneath the undercarriages of their trucks, in sun-scorch so fierce that it wicks the moisture off the surface of your eyeballs and sucks the air and its water content out of your lungs. It’s 0900 now though and the day still clings to its last breath of cool. We skim over a surface as smooth as tarmac. Not a bush, not a hummock. A teacup set on the sand would show up five miles away.
Over the Chev’s bonnet I can see T1 and R1 patrols, speeding ahead in third gear, six trucks each in diamond formation, with patrol commanders out in front in their jeeps, the lot dispersed in case of air attack—two hundred yards between each vehicle and half a mile between patrols. Collie’s jeep lays down tracks ahead; over my tailboard I see our trailing Chevs. They look like torpedo boats at sea. Our truck’s plume blasts behind like a shallow wake; the two to our rear throw up their own miniature cockerel tails. The trail blows away to the north. It’s gorgeous. We sport like lads set loose in the grandest of amusement parks. Punch grins from behind the wheel. “Fun, ain’t it?” He’s already got a two-day start on his beard.
The patrols’ route from Faiyoum has been south to Beni Suef, past the poor-relation pyramids of Hawara and El Lahun, and on to the Assyut road. Our departure is supposed to be secret but when we bundle through the gharry-and donkey cart–congested bazaar at Nazir el Wab, the boys who sell melons and dates off street-barrows are waiting in the lanes as if they’ve known we were coming for days. The patrols have pooled their piastres under Sergeant Kehoe of T1; he stocks up as we weave through the crush at a pace slower than a walking man’s, buying eggs and dates, lubia beans and fresh oranges. This is the last place that paper money will be good. By ten we have cleared “the cultivation” and left civilisation behind.
The other ranks have still not been briefed on the mission. That will come in the next few days, whenever Jake feels ready. What all have been told is that the usual routes into the desert can no longer be taken. Rommel’s forces now hold Siwa oasis, the old LRDG base. From there, the Germans can patrol by air and ground for hundreds of miles. Other enemy units have either physically blocked the tracks via the Qattara Depression or are scouring them too frequently for any Allied formation to take a chance on using them. As for us, we’ll be swinging far to the south, beyond th
e range of Axis patrol planes, then making west across the theoretically impassable waste of the Great Egyptian Sand Sea. For me this is tremendously exciting.
Dearest Rose,
Finally I am where I want to be. Insignificant as our tiny formation may be numerically, I feel for the first time a part of great things. We shall be crossing stretches of wilderness that no motorised expedition, other than prior LRDG patrols, has ever traversed, and seeing sights that few, if any, Europeans have ever seen.
The track into the desert comes up suddenly at the end of an irrigated patch of melons. There’s a stone cairn and a battered tin sign with the seal of the Royal Egyptian Automobile Club:
SIWA 500 KM
The column turns off the road. A ragged two-tyre track runs straight ahead. It’s hotter away from the river. The temperature jumps ten degrees in the space of a hundred yards, becoming a parched, furnace-like blast that’s oddly invigorating. The trucks bang across choppy but good going. I feel elation. I start to turn round for a last glimpse at civilisation. Punch stops me. “Don’t look back, sir. Bad luck.”
The track runs dead straight, a washboard that rattles your brain in its pan and wrenches your molars in their sockets. Punch handles the wheel skilfully, though; he finds the speed that skims us crest to crest. Other trucks swing off the verges, seeking smoother going. The wind beats out of the south, our left hand as we speed west, making each trailing vehicle decline in that direction to avoid the dust of the ones ahead. It’s a thrilling sight, this desert-camouflaged armada zipping along at forty miles an hour.
Ninety minutes out, at a formation called Needle Rock, our White 10-tonner and Mack NR9 are waiting for us with fuel. A tall Bedford flatbed squats by the rock as well, carrying under tarpaulins the four Afrika Korps jeeps that I had noted back at Faiyoum. My watch says 1100. Punch logs the temp at 122, though it doesn’t feel that hot. The men are lying up under the lorries, making a lunch of tinned salmon, melons and egg-fruit. The RASC driver off-loads the jeeps, refusing all assistance. He wears welder’s gloves. Even under the tarps the metal surfaces are too sizzling to touch. The men eye the swastika-and-palm-tree insignias of the Afrika Korps on the Kübelwagens’ bonnets. “Who’re we after on this beat-up, Lieutenant?” calls a trooper as I pass, heading for a pow-wow at Jake’s truck. I stay quiet and keep moving.