Still, I am at peace. Never have I felt so fully used or so at one with my companions. Not a patch of glory attaches to our endeavours in this hour. We crawl like beetles, marking progress not in miles but feet. Nor am I “leading” in any way that the military manuals would recognise or commend. I’m just slogging miserably beside the others. But we are one, each giving his all. I catch a second wind, and I feel my brothers-in-arms catch theirs too.
By first light we have reached the western fall of the escarpment, which remains thankfully in deep shadow. Collie’s brakes have packed up, so we simply wrestle the truck down the slope, tow-chained to the Lancia, whose own drums have worn to bare metal and screech every yard of the way. By eight, we have reached the bottom and snugged the trucks down in the deepest wadi we can find. The fellows weave brush and netting into masterpieces of camouflage, then collapse, all except the lookouts I post in one-hour aircraft watches. All day, enemy Storches and 110s scour the area but fail to spot us. At last with dark we give way to sleep. Surely nothing else can go wrong, at least till morning.
26
I HEAR a roar and feel the earth break apart beneath me. Something cold and fierce jerks me awake. A gale howls. Am I dreaming? I hear Punch shout from up the slope, but his words are torn away in the wind. Then I see the flood.
The shock wave of air preceding it bowls me off my sleeping perch. In an instant, the foliage I have used as a mattress is sucked away, along with my Thompson, blankets and tarpaulin. Collie’s truck is lifted like a toy. It shoots past me upside-down and is swept from sight in the dark.
I’m half-naked, scrambling frantically up the face of the wadi. Directly below, I hear the Lancia cartwheeling away on the surface of the flood. Oliphant and Collie have been sleeping in it. Jenkins too. I can’t see them. I’m climbing hand over hand. The torrent howls, inches beneath my heels. It’s tearing the bank out from under me. Punch catches me by one arm. Boulders and rafts of brush boom past beneath our feet. I realise that this is a flash flood. That’s why there’s no rain. Storms in another part of the Jebel have produced this torrent while we, here, have remained dry and unalerted.
In minutes the worst is over. It’s remarkable how quickly your courage returns, the instant you know you’re safe. Punch, Grainger and I have clambered on to a solid shelf. With each second, the fury-sound of the waters recedes. The torrent, whose depth has been twenty feet, shrinks to ten, five, then a very rapidly moving three or four. We are high, if not dry. Sections of slope continue to fall away beneath us into the still-churning flood. “Collie! Oliphant!” We cry our comrades’ names into the dark.
Now the rain comes, a frigid, drenching deluge in which the three of us hunker, mute and shivering. The scale of the calamity overwhelms us. What can we do?
Flood depth has dropped to three feet, still a wickedly lethal torrent. Our first imperative is to find any of our companions still alive and bring aid to those who have been hurt. Jenkins appears, preceded by a shout; then Oliphant, sluicing down the face, as mud-sodden and frozen as we are. His left knee is hurt but he claims it’s nothing serious. We take stock of our resources: two coats and three blankets; one .303 Enfield with no ammunition but the six rounds in the single magazine that happened to be in the rifle when the flood struck; two one-litre water bottles. I’ve still got my rucksack, which I had lent to Punch to use as a pillow; it holds a shirt and a pair of trousers, along with Stein’s manuscript and the remnants of my much-thumbed reading materials. The patrol’s pooled resources now consist of two tins of sardines, half a handful of boiled sweets, a fountain pen and two bayonets. Grainger still has his watch. We have no map, no tea, no electric torch, no Verey pistol. We are missing two men.
An hour has passed since the flood. Time is 0320. Our party starts downstream, spread out in a skirmish line, calling Collie’s and Marks’ names. Snakes glide across the knee-high surface. They are as frightened of us as we are of them. Though the waters have receded to wading depth, the volume of the flood has produced pockets of quicksand. Into these we sink again and again; a cry and we haul one another out. A quarter of a mile down, we come upon Marks, alive, but with both legs so battered from the pummelling he has taken in the flood that he cannot stand, although it turns out no bones are broken. He’s also taken a blow to the skull, possibly from a log or boulder, which has peeled the scalp back in a flap the size of a man’s hand, exposing the bare bone. The wound bleeds profusely. Marks is in shock and shivering convulsively. We carry him on to dry land and warm him between our bodies, taking turns. Jenkins, who has replaced Miller as our medical orderly, gently draws the flap of scalp back into place and binds it down with a web belt. “If we can find one of the trucks,” he says, “it’ll have a first-aid box with thread and a needle.” Jenkins volunteers to stay. I leave him with Oliphant to keep Marks warm; the rest of us push on.
A hundred yards downstream we find Collie’s truck. The vehicle lies on its left side, sunk so deep that the only parts visible are the rear axle and the tyre mount behind the driver’s door. Everything else is submerged in muck and brush, which has built up so thickly and in such a jumble, it’s a miracle we discover the truck at all. I climb aboard via the axle. Every item of kit that was in the truckbed—guns, ammo, petrol and water tins—has been carried away. We call Collie’s name. Nothing. The first-aid box remains in place. I send Oliphant back to Marks and Jenkins with it. Punch, Grainger and I push on along the wadi bottom.
Daylight. We still haven’t found Collie. Back at the wreck of the truck, Oliphant and Jenkins have got Marks settled out of the wet, swathed in what clothing and blankets they’ve been able to retrieve. Jenkins has stitched Marks’ scalp, but the poor fellow tosses miserably, shivering and semi-conscious. Oliphant’s injured knee has swollen; he can barely hobble. We scratch out a camp above any potential flood line. When Marks recovers enough to speak, he can’t stop apologising. He begs to be left behind; he can’t stand the thought, he says, of his condition’s putting his mates in danger. “Shut the hell up,” Grainger commands him in a voice exquisitely tender.
I call a council. “No one’s leaving anyone,” I say. We have found two jerry cans of petrol and a tin of matches; between them it’s enough to get a fire going, even of soaked driftwood. The risk of smoke has to be taken; we’ll freeze to death without a blaze to dry our clothes and blankets. We have no billy and no tea. Punch produces two almost-dry cigarettes; we get one lit and share it amongst all. “No hogging it, you blokes!” It is the most satisfying smoke any of us has ever had.
The final fallback plan imparted by Nick Wilder before his departure was to rendezvous at Bir Hemet on the track to Augila oasis. I go over this now with the men. “We’ll rest for the morning and dry out our kit. Punch and I will keep looking for Collie. In the afternoon we’ll take one shot at digging out the truck. If it’s hopeless, we’ll sleep the night and start on foot to RV with Wilder’s patrol as planned.”
27
MIDDAY: PUNCH AND I find Collie and the Lancia. Both have been swept a mile down the wadi. Collie is suffering from exposure but he revives fast with the sight of his comrades and the warmth of the two dry blankets we have brought from the fire. He has survived the night under dirt and brush in an actual foxhole, having evicted the foxes. As for the Lancia, it lies upright, buried to its axles in smooth mud, with two tyres intact and two shredded.
I send Punch back to collect Marks and the others and to salvage what he can from the wreckage of Collie’s truck. The vehicle itself is past repairing. By mid-afternoon all who are fit have made two trips, recovering three jerry cans of fuel and an armload of hoses, belts and fittings. The patrol assembles round the Lancia. A freezing rain has started; about three hours of daylight remain. We dig the vehicle out and manhandle it on to dry ground. Chocolate-coloured sludge sluices from every runway. “Kick her over, Skip,” says Grainger. For the hell of it, I try. She fires immediately! I find myself weeping. Others jig and pound one another’s backs. The engine stalls, b
ut nobody cares. If she’ll spark once, she’ll do it again.
The party passes the night in a freezing huddle, then turns-to at first light. For tools we have only two fixed spanners and a single adjustable. No screwdrivers, no socket or plug spanners, no Allen keys, calipers or points. We have no tools to pull the head or replace it, no gaskets or material to fabricate them from, no tyre irons, no levers, no pump and no spare inner tubes, valves or wheel braces to remove or replace wheel nuts. We have motor oil and petrol. We have water.
The most pressing issue is care for the wounded. Oliphant’s knee is looking worse; Collie’s burns, which have re-opened in the flood, are tormenting him; Marks’ condition continues to deteriorate. The Lancia has to carry them. Grainger will be our navigator. He estimates Bir Hemet at seventy miles south by west. Walking and trucking the wounded, we might make it in three nights. But to navigate you must know your starting position; we can only guess at ours. The desert we must cross is cut by balats and seasonal mudflats that we’ll have to square round, with no map and no means of shooting the stars or sun. It will take incredible luck to strike our objective, and if we overrun it we’ll have no way of knowing. Even if we get there, nothing guarantees that Nick Wilder’s patrol will be waiting.
I think this but don’t say it.
Everyone else, I imagine, is thinking it too.
All day the men toil, first disconnecting, flushing and drying all fuel, air and water lines; laboriously reconnecting their clamps using a bayonet point for a screwdriver; then cleaning and reassembling all pumps. Two desert foxes watch from a nearby outcrop. Their coats are the colour of sand, their brushes thin and scruffy. Half a dozen times the cry of “Aircraft!” sends us scurrying. The foxes never budge. Each time, the enemy planes pass over.
We decide to name the spot Two Foxes. We’ll put it on the map when we get back. This cheers us considerably.
The law of the Perversity of Physical Objects continues to frustrate us. Everything that can go wrong, does. During the flood the backing plate of the Lancia’s differential has cracked open, exposing the innards, caking the gear train with sand and mud, and of course draining all fluid. Somehow Punch succeeds in sealing and rebolting it. But what can we use for lubrication? From a spiny cactus, we scrape the inner goo. Banana skins have been known to serve; perhaps this will too. Meanwhile Oliphant has taken the carburettor apart, picking out sand and sludge speck by speck. Jenkins works on the brake lines.
By nightfall we’ve sorted out everything but the tyres. Only two still hold air. Grainger supplies a trick he used on tractors back home: stuff them with brush. It works. Except now, removing the right front wheel housing, Grainger discovers the axle is broken. We have no spares. By now it’s too dark to work. Suddenly our spectating foxes rise on their haunches and trot away. We hear growls in the distance.
Diesels.
Combat Group 288 returns.
We net the Lancia and deploy ourselves into a perimeter. The Germans approach in two parties, scouring the wadis as they go. Clearly our pursuers know we can have fled in only one direction and can have got only so far. We can see the beams of their torches and headlights, discovering Collie’s truck a mile back up the wadi. Is the game up? Is this it at last?
Darkness saves us, followed by a fresh downpour. Our fellows crouch miserably, hearing the enemy hastening to rig their own shelters and bivvies. The foe pitch camp parallel to ours and a quarter of a mile out on to the flat, safely clear of the flood zone.
They haven’t spotted us.
For the moment we’re safe.
But Marks’ state is getting desperate. Fever racks him. He thinks the voices from the German camp are ghosts of lost mates. He calls their names. Punch muffles him with a hand over the mouth but Marks, made frantic by this, gurgles louder and thrashes, trying to work free. Collie crosses swiftly to him, presses one palm over Marks’ mouth and cracks him hard with the other fist—a solid shot, right between the eyes. Marks gags, blinks, then comes to himself. He shuts up. Collie cradles him, gently as a babe. “My old man used to work that trick on me all the time.”
Rain abates, succeeded by a cold northerly gale. Our pursuers have set up their camp snug and tight. We can see the light of their fires, hear their laughter and smell their potatoes and sausages frying. I have assigned men in pairs to warm Marks with their bodies. When Grainger and my turn comes, our companion is shivering convulsively. Grainger’s eyes search mine.
Shall we surrender?
The enemy may have a doctor or a medical orderly; for certain they have vehicles that can carry Marks to aid. They are not monsters; they will help.
Is this war?
War is formations of armour, men and machines clashing in action. That’s not this. We’re just frightened, freezing men struggling to keep a comrade alive. “Marks…” I say.
“Don’t do it,” he answers.
Grainger and I press him more tightly between us. “Don’t be such a damn hero,” says Grainger.
There are moments for which no amount of training can prepare one. A man’s life against a notion of honour. Who am I, at twenty-two years old, to make such a decision, to risk everything a man possesses or ever will possess, his wife, his children, their lives and future, against an abstract principle whose merit I am no more capable of gauging than he?
Two days ago I was moments from reaching for my sidearm when Jenkins dared broach the prospect of showing the white flag. Now I don’t care. Victory or defeat will come willy-nilly, determined by forces far greater than our meagre mob. What matters now is this good man’s life. I can save him with a simple shout into the dark. And if I don’t? Shall we bury Marks at dawn, to join Standage and Miller, to be followed tomorrow by how many others of thirst or starvation, including myself?
But I can’t do it.
“Can you hang on, Marksy?”
At dawn, our pursuers break camp. They perform a desultory search of the wadi, finding nothing, then form up round their lieutenant for final orders before departure. Shall I hail them? I see them plainly from my perch on the slope.
I let them go.
Our fellows emerge like foxes from their dens. We look like death. Collie’s eyes meet mine. He has been thinking the same thing. Are we fools?
Hot water and biscuits do nothing to restore us, but Grainger overnight has hatched a ploy to get the Lancia moving again.
“Strip the front axle and rig a sledge in its place. A couple of logs lashed together will do, like the tail skid of an airplane. Then run in reverse. It won’t be pretty,” he says, “but it’ll carry the wounded and water.”
No one congratulates Grainger. His comrades just touch his shoulder or clap him lightly on the back as they get to work.
We rig a platform that Marks and Oliphant can be carried on. Collie wedges himself into the passenger seat. Punch drives. The advantage of having only the Lancia is that we’re less likely to be spotted from the air. We keep two men up front on lookout for 288 and one in the rear scouring the sky. We walk for an hour, rest for fifteen minutes. After three hours, we stop for a bite and the last cig. Bir Hemet, if we reach it, will be the morning after next.
By mid-afternoon we have crossed the balats and entered a stony belt scored by limestone ridges in spectacular shapes. At one point our tyres crunch over a sward of shells, relics of some ancient sea floor.
We’re seeing Arabs now—small groups at first, then longer trains on foot and camel. They’re miles off and come no closer. The pan has become dead level between distant ranges of hills. Surely the tribesmen have seen us. But they make no move to approach. When we strike in their direction, they withdraw. Are they only being cautious, or do they harbour evil designs? The Germans will surely have posted rewards for our capture, or threats of reprisal for furnishing us aid.
All day our party struggles towards the range of hills in the distance. This will be the Gilf Atar, the highland we must get round to strike the track to Bir Hemet. When we find solid going, w
e send the Lancia ahead, as fast as it can go. This is only three or four miles per hour but it cheers us. The hills crawl closer. By dark, the Lancia has reached them.
When the rest of us in the walking party straggle in two hours later, Marks, Oliphant, Collie and Punch are resting snugly in a cave above the ruins of a Roman cistern with good water in abundance. I call the men round. Bir Hemet may be as close as forty miles. Shall we leave the wounded here with the weapons and the less strong men, while two or three of the ablest strike for the RV tonight on the Lancia?
We’re debating this when three tribesmen appear on the plain below, on foot, leading a train of four camels. They return our hails; apparently they are heading for this same cave. Up they come. When Punch asks whether they have goat’s milk or eggs to sell, the tallest, a striking fellow, asks, “Inglesi?”
“English, mate!” cries Punch. He begins blathering the names of every officer and patrol leader who might have crossed this patch of desolation, Wilder, Easonsmith, Mayne, Tinker, finally getting to Vladimir Peniakoff. Popski.
At this, all three tribesmen light up. They know Popski. They love Popski. It was their honour, they report, to have broken bread with Popski two nights past.
Book Six
Wilder’s Gap
28
TWENTY DAYS LATER I’m standing at attention in borrowed khaki drill trousers and tunic before a staff colonel and two majors at Advanced Headquarters Eighth Army, now at Marble Arch on the Gulf of Sirte, having been flown via Zella from Jalo oasis. Tinker, Popski and Nick Wilder have been brought in from other quadrants. Tinker and I are interviewed together before even being permitted to file our reports to LRDG, then ordered immediately into hospital.
My bowels have been running liquid for the past two weeks. Amid far greater exigencies, I have simply endured the inconvenience, reckoning that my system will restore itself as soon as it acquires a few fresh vegetables. Now a friendly South African doctor gives me the diagnosis: pneumonia.