Killing Rommel (17 page)

“We're your own blokes!” Punch is howling at them, appending a raft of obscenities. Oliphant shouts something I can't hear and points at the planes as they bank away and begin to climb. I understand. He means they'll be coming back.

On the crest of the scarp, though we will only learn this later, the same sort of chaos has played out. The dust we saw was indeed Jake and Nick and Major Mayne. The two other Hurricane pilots must have seen it too. Have they mistaken it for the red signal smoke, meant to mark the target? Or are these pilots as adrenalinaddled as we are and blasting away at the first thing that moves?

I can't see Grainger's truck anymore. Collie races ahead. Every gun in the camp, it seems, is firing at the planes. Suddenly we're among an infantry encampment. Enemy soldiers are diving out of our path. Punch flattens a tent kitchen. Our right mud-guard blasts through the flue and tank of a camp stove; the blazing fuel explodes in all directions, painting us as we speed past. We're on fire. I'm on the truckbed, wrestling the Browning as flaming liquid lacquers a stack of wooden ammunition cases and coats two boxes of Mills bombs. The hair on my arms incinerates; my beard catches. I grab a tarpaulin and beat myself like a madman, then plunge on top of the ammo boxes, trying to smother the blaze. Now the tarp itself catches fire. Oliphant's focus is on finding the Mammoth, whose camouflage netting is a lot more effective from this low angle; he has no idea that our truck is about to go up like a Roman candle. We're directly below the scarp now, four hundred yards out.

“Where is that bastard?” Oliphant curses in frustration.

Now the Mark IIIs at the base of the ridge spot us. Flashes blaze from their 7.92s. As I beat at the flames on the ammunition cases, splinters of wood tear into my right cheek and ear—slivers from the truck's flank being shredded by machine-gun fire. If I had stayed standing, I'd have been cut in half.

Oliphant continues cursing. Blown grit has fouled one of his drum magazines; he can't get it seated on the gun. He still doesn't know the truck's on fire. By now I've hurled the burning tarp over-board. I can't get the ammo cases doused so I'm heaving them out, on fire. A wooden case of .303 ball ammunition weighs over fifty pounds. I'm flinging them out as if they were crumpets. Meanwhile the truck is weaving so violently that I fear Punch has been hit at the wheel. I dive over the forewall into the cab. Punch has the accelerator to the floor. “I'm fine!” he shouts.

Now the planes come back.

One pair takes the scarp, the other the flat. I see Collie's truck, a hundred yards ahead and angling diagonally away from the summit, so its rear-facing Breda gun can get off at least a few rounds where they'll do some damage. Collie fires the gun, Standage feeds the oversize belt; Midge and Hornsby are up front. The Hurricanes dive on us and on them.

In slow motion I see a double stitching of cannon fire rip the sand in front of Collie. The right-hand stitch rolls over the long axis of his truck. The vehicle is a rolling bomb, packed with explosives. I see the rear half disintegrate. Midge at the wheel is attempting a hard right to evade the cannon fire. As the truck's hind end explodes, the frame and forechassis cartwheel into a series of high, bounding flips. I see the undercarriage ten feet in the air, then the engine, somersaulting over. The Breda gun drops dead-weight, seven hundred pounds, on to Standage. The Hurricanes pass with a shock wave that nearly floors us.

Later, Nick will tell of the parallel bedlam taking place on the summit. Before the first strafing run, one of the SAS jeeps has succeeded in getting close enough to the Mammoth to mark it with red smoke as planned. But somehow the Hurricanes don't see this. Their first pass misses everything. At the same time the Mammoth's defenders, reckoning the purpose of the smoke, cleverly snatch up smoke grenades of their own and begin marking every vehicle and position within two hundred yards.

The Mammoth, like all staff command centres, is protected by its own combat team; these troops have now taken up defensive positions and are plastering our fellows' vehicles with machine-gun fire. Neither Jake nor Nick sees what happens to the first SAS teams in the assault, but it can be nothing but death or capture. Now come the Hurricanes on their second pass. By this time the trucks and jeeps of Jake, Nick and Major Mayne have been located by the enemy and are being engaged in an all-out firefight. The Hurricanes' third pass attacks this. Nick tells us later that he is firing his Thompson into a lane of Axis staff vehicles, sited shrewdly away from the Mammoth and pointing in the opposite direction, when he hears the planes dropping on to him. In an instant the bonnet of his truck vaporises, along with both front tyres, radiator and half the engine. Motor oil scalds his face, blinding him. The Chev nose-dives into the sand. Nick is certain that his number is up. But the truck simply stops, settles upright, and he and his driver and gunner dismount, “like stepping out of a taxi in Grosvenor Square.” The Hurricanes have shot up everything on the summit except the Mammoth. “I can see the bloody thing,” says Nick later, “fat as Aunt Fanny's arse and not a scratch on it.” One of Mayne's jeeps picks up Nick and his men. In the end they flee down the reverse slope of the scarp, chased by the machine guns and cannons of enemy armoured cars.

Down on the flat, Punch has got our truck flat-out, racing for the wreck of Collie's. We can see Collie, charred black but on his feet, along with Standage, whose left leg hangs limp. Collie supports him. We can't find Midge or Hornsby. As our truck barrels towards Collie and Standage, another vehicle appears on our right—an Afrika Korps van, racing towards the wreck at top speed. I shout to Oliphant to take the German out. The camp is pandemonium, with men and trucks criss-crossing madly and smoke and dust everywhere. Oliphant swings the Vickers. Then I see: the enemy van is an ambulance! The Germans obviously think the shot-up truck is one of theirs. Why wouldn't they, when it's just been strafed by two British Hurricanes? Oliphant sees the red cross and holds fire. Only one thought animates us—to get to our comrades first and haul them out of there.

Punch ploughs to a stop alongside Collie and Standage. Oliphant and I dash to them on foot. The ambulance men are racing up as well—two young stretcher bearers, barely more than boys, and an officer in shorts and peaked cap who looks as if he might be a doctor. Now we spot Midge and Hornsby. Midge's jaw has been shot away; his shorts and shirt have been burned to scratch; he is naked, his chest, arms and legs charred black. He rises from the spot where he had been flung. His eyes look clear. Hornsby lies face-down in the sand. Midge is trying to speak. Blood rises in bubbles from where his mouth used to be. I feel as if I'm in hell. The magnitude of the horror is more than one's senses can bear. At the same time a part of me remains lucid. That part remembers the Hurricanes. In moments they will be back to rake the earth with another fusillade. Oliphant and I get to Midge just as the doctor scampers up. He takes our comrade under one arm.
“Hilf dem Anderen!”
he shouts. Help the other one!

More soldiers are racing up from other units. They still don't realise we're the enemy. Collie gets Standage aboard our truck. Punch hauls him up. Oliphant and I drop beside Hornsby. When we turn him over, he looks OK. Maybe the crash has just knocked him cold. Then we see the pool forming at the base of his skull. The stretcher bearers have got Midge now. I'm thinking, How can we get him away? The ambulance driver has backed round to take our men aboard. A medic hauls the rear doors wide; we can see the hangers for litters inside. The doctor comes up before me. I see his face change. For a moment he freezes. Then, in perfect English:

“Save yourselves!” He indicates Hornsby. “Leave your wounded with me!”

I glance to Oliphant, then to Punch and Collie.

“Both will die if you move them,” says the medical officer.

I wish I could say that I got the man's name or at least shook his hand. But I couldn't make myself say or do anything, only glance in agony at Midge and Hornsby, then bolt like hell for the truck.

Ten minutes later the Hurricanes have gone and so have we, tearing south into the desert. Grainger's truck and Conyngham's jeep are missing. We have no idea what has happened to Jake or Nick or to Major Mayne and the SAS men.

18

IT TAKES FORTY-EIGHT hours, travelling by night and lying up by day, to reach the rallying point at Bir el Ensor, Sore Thumb. We have barely closed an eye the entire way.

Two miles into the desert, fleeing the enemy, Te Aroha IV's engine begins pouring smoke. Five hours of daylight remain; we can see the dust of Axis armoured cars several miles behind us and hear aircraft engines east and west, searching for us and the others. Luck stays with us. The enemy, it seems, have been tardy in realising that the raid was truck-borne as well as from the air. Our vehicles, barrelling across the camp, were mistaken by the Germans for their own, evading the planes. By the time they reckon what's what, we've got a start on them. At nightfall, our first halt to draw breath, Punch discovers a heavy-calibre rip through the sump and a crack in the block you can stick your little finger into. “I told you,” says Punch. “She's been running on two cylinders for twenty miles.”

The truck pushes on, leaking and overheating. Standage groans in the back. His wounds are in both legs. The right is mostly burns and abrasions, but the left has been nearly severed at the knee; the bottom half is bound to the top only by strips of bloody gristle, for which trauma we can do nothing except bind the mess as tightly as we can and shoot Standage full of morphia. Punch and Collie have cleared a space for him among spare wheels and petrol tins and set him on our combined bedding, which, we discover when we unbundle it, has been set alight by tracer fire and charred half to rags. None the less we pack this under and round Standage, trying to make him as comfortable as possible. His only complaint is the cold. Funny, when a man is hit, you call him by his nickname. Standage has become “Stan” and now “Standy.” Collie donates his syrette of morphia though he needs it badly for his own burns. I contribute mine too. Standage's courage humbles us. Collie himself is burnt across his back and neck and the right side of his face. His beard has been singed crisp. The truck gasps and wheezes across the plain. The radiator keeps boiling over. Its overflow tank has been holed and continues to drain despite patch after patch. We refill using the “honey jar” of our week's urine, saved for just such an emergency. I'm worried about Collie going into shock. He deflects my concern. “Plenty of time,” he says, “to fag out tomorrow.”

When the engine becomes too hot to run, we shut down in neutral and push. The labour strains us nearly to our limit, but we have no other option. If we abandon the truck, we'll have to carry on our backs water, food, ammunition and guns, not to mention Standage, on whom the passage will be a lot easier reclining on blankets than carried in a litter. In fact, mercifully he conks out under the morphine. We push till the engine cools, then fire up and drive till we smell steam and gaskets smoking. Push and drive, push and drive. Our “A” set has got wrecked sometime during the escape. Worse, the theodolite has been shattered. We can't transmit or receive and we can't navigate. Sometime around 2200 we notice the truck getting easier to push. A downhill. We're so addled with the hangover of adrenalin, fear and exhaustion that we begin laughing. We give the truck a rousing shove, then leap aboard and coast. It's sport. The truck is picking up speed. The night is moonless; it's like driving through ink. No one is even at the wheel. What could we possibly run into in the middle of the desert? Suddenly Punch cries “Brake!” Next thing we know, Te Aroha IV's nose is in mid-air and the frame is crashing like a bomb on to the stone rim of a fifty-foot escarpment. The truck hangs up, half over the precipice. Standage shoots upright with a howl. The rest of us grab any handhold we can find and, hauling with every sinew, manage to manhandle the vehicle back from the brink. Standage is in agony from the jolt. We swaddle him with every scrap of blanket we've got, imploring his forgiveness and promising never to let it happen again. “Bugger!” says Stan. “I woke and thought I was dead.”

We're spent and freezing. I call a rest and break out the rum. We're mad to risk a flame to brew up but I've got to get something hot and sweet into my men's stomachs. We're just sharing out the tea when Grainger's truck appears out of the darkness.

He's been nosing along the same scarp for an hour, having nearly gone over the edge several times himself. The truck trundles up, preceded by wary long-distance halloos. By heaven, we're relieved to find each other! Grainger's wireless is still working and so is his engine. He takes us in tow. His men Marks and Durrance are alive and unhurt, but Corporal Conyngham and Holden and the jeep are still missing. “The Jerries probably grabbed them,” says Grainger, “back there in the shoot-up.”

By dawn we've got both trucks under netting in a shallow wash. We snooze on and off all day, doing maintenance on the weapons and improvising seals and plugs for the various points of leakage in the engine's lines and hoses. Collie claims his burns are only a nuisance. I'm not so sure. We scrounge up every bit of margarine to grease him down and even use motor oil, which at least is sterile coming straight from the tin. We prop him in a hammock alongside Standage and try to keep him warm. Grainger's truck has two more morphine stickers, which we save for Standage. It's extraordinary how lucid he remains. He asks me to read to him. From my rucksack I produce
Paradise Lost.

Standage can't take it. I try the Bible; that doesn't work either. I wind up reading from Stein's manuscript. Standage likes it. The homosexual allusions sail right over his head. I've forgotten how good the book is. It lifts me too. When we get tired, I tell Standage about Stein and how he died. He tells me about his daughter in New Zealand. She's a piano prodigy. In the farming community outside Wellington where Standage and his family live, there's no teacher capable of taking his daughter to the level that he and his wife believe she's capable of achieving. Standage and his brothers have pitched in so that the young girl can live and study in town. “I miss her badly,” says Standage, “but when a girl's got a gift…”

As he's telling me this, the oddest thing happens. I realise what I want to do with my life. My civilian life, that is, if I ever get back to one. I want to be a publisher. Not a writer. I lack the gift and I'm not cut out for the loneliness.

A publisher. I'll have my own house and bring out writers. Why hadn't I thought of this sooner?

I tell this to Standy. He gets it right away. “Stuff comes to you at the strangest times, don't it, Skip?”

Patrol commander is not my post; it's Collie's. But the others take note of Standage's slip of the tongue. He's lying under camouflage netting with his bad leg bound and splinted and his head pillowed on the oak block we use to brace the jack on. I glance to Collie, who rests on his side in the back of the truck on an improvised hammock with his back, neck and face bandaged. He meets my eye. So do Punch and Grainger.

By this silent ratification, I have become patrol commander.

Enemy scout planes overfly us all day, Henschels and Storches and, mid-afternoon, a flight of Italian Macchi fighters. Around dusk we hear a lone engine circling. Punch and I take the Browning and creep up to the crown of the wadi we're lying up in. A Storch scout plane with black Axis crosses on both wings sets down on the flat, stopping two hundred yards in front of us.

The hatch opens; out pops the pilot. He's alone. Punch fixes him in his gunsights. The flier has no idea we're here. He drops his trousers, grabs hold of a wing strut and unloads a defecation that would make a plough horse proud. Punch's finger tightens on the trigger; I stop him with a hand on his shoulder.

“If that plane doesn't return to its base tonight, the Jerries'll send ten more looking for it tomorrow.”

Reluctantly Punch backs off.

The pilot climbs into his Storch and wings away.

“I'd love to run into that bastard someday,” says Punch, “just to tell him how close he came.”

The following night, riding and being towed, we limp in to our base at Sore Thumb. Nick Wilder is waiting with the remains of T1 patrol, two trucks and six men. What's left of Jake's R1 are there too, with Captain Lawson, the medical officer. Jake himself was evacuated twenty-four hours ago with a broken collarbone, along with six other wounded LRDG men. A signal from Cairo has ordered them to retire to Bir al Khamsa; another patrol will be despatched to pick them up. Jake has asked Doctor Lawson to remain, anticipating serious casualties among the later-arriving parties.

While we newcomers scratch out a camp, Major Mayne straggles in with three jeeps and six troopers, including Cooper, Seekings and Mike Sadler. Four of his commandos are missing. Mayne plans to rest only long enough to get a meal and a brew; then he'll turn back with his surviving men to look for the missing. He will not leave them on foot with the enemy hunting them.

Bir
is Arabic for well. Our lie-up is typical of these flyblown oases: a patch of stunted palms, a few scattered outbuildings and the well itself—a circle of mortared stones with an iron cover called a
meit,
pronounced “mate,” to keep out the drifting sand. A flap-door allows a bucket through; when the
bir
is dry, the tribesmen haul the cover off and rope themselves down into the void, seeking a trickle. Campsites lie here and there among the camel thorn. This night in addition to our lot, several kin-groups of Senussi Arabs have set up shop. You can smell their camels and hear the jingling of the bells on their sheep and goats.

Two crosses mark fresh graves. Nick tells me that three others of our fellows have been buried in haste during halts on the getaway. One was Malcolm McCool, the Kiwi sergeant who showed me my quarters the first day I joined the unit. Another was Corporal Mickey Lukich, an Olympic gymnast who came into the SAS as a driver for its founder, David Stirling, and who won the Military Medal for heroism in the first raid on Benghazi.

It's sombre, settling in. Captain Lawson has rigged the rear of his truck as a one-tent hospital. We give up Standage to his much-welcomed ministrations. Collie only wants grease or butter for his burns; he sets off with Punch to buy or barter some from the Arabs. A motor repair shop has been set up. Grainger brings our trucks in. I report to Nick and Major Mayne, who both call me Chap and shake my hand with surprising affection. God knows I am glad to see them.

The patrols have been out for more than a month now. Every man wears a beard. Here at the
bir,
there's water for a shave. No one wants it. The matted growth has become a badge of honour; to scrape it off would somehow devalue the sacrifice of our fallen comrades.

Before he goes seeking the missing, Major Mayne calls a council. For several minutes the talk is of the men we've lost and those who've been brought out wounded. Jake's party, Mayne speculates, will be halfway to Bir al Khamsa by now. While he's speaking, a signal comes in from HQ informing Mayne, who has assumed command since Jake's evacuation, that three Bombay bombers equipped as ambulances will be sent from Cairo to LG 119, an emergency landing ground that is farther away than Khamsa but over better going. This signal will be sent to Jake at his next scheduled check-in. With luck, our commander and his wounded will be on clean sheets at Heliopolis in three days.

What about us? Jake's truck and jeep have taken as little petrol as possible to complete their passage, but even this modest measure depletes the overall stock, leaving the remaining vehicles low. The patrols have water now from the
bir,
but ammunition is short, both fitters' stocks of spare parts have been lost, and we don't have a single vehicle without mechanical problems of one sort or another. Speculation follows on what retribution Rommel will seek when he learns that raiders have targeted him personally.

What do we do now?

Have we had it?

Do we turn back?

The council is held in the lee of Nick Wilder's wireless truck. The fitters, Durrance and Lister, give their report. They'll need another day, possibly two, to put the trucks right. Captain Lawson expresses concern for the wounded. Standage must be transported to aid. Two of Mayne's SAS men need attention too. All three must be put on trucks as soon as the vehicles can be made mechanically sound and evacuated to LG 119 or to wherever Cairo designates. Should Lawson accompany them? Leaving the patrols without a medical officer? Do we all go back?

Mayne wants to know first what damage our raid has done. Nick and I with Sergeants Kehoe and Wannamaker and the SAS NCOs give our assessments. The conclusion is, Damn little. Mayne is furious with us and with himself. While the council debates, a signal comes in from Cairo. Both patrols are to withdraw to refit and await orders.

“Balls,” says Mayne.

He wants to go back after Rommel.

Someone asks whether he's serious.

Mayne spreads a map and indicates Alamein. “Monty will break through the Jerries any minute. Rommel will fall back. Hell, he's falling back already.” Mayne indicates the open desert south of Mersa Matruh and Sidi Barrani. “Wherever Rommel goes, we'll get there before he does. We'll be waiting for him.”

I look to Nick Wilder. He's grinning. So are Reg Seekings, Johnny Cooper and the SAS men. Are they out of their bloody minds? Sergeant Wannamaker attempts to restore sanity. He cites the enemy ground and air patrols scouring the desert right now. Do we imagine the whole Afrika Korps isn't on high alert, hunting for us? We don't have Directional Finding any more and we don't have the RAF.

“Screw the RAF,” says Mayne. “This whole show has been too complicated from the start. We should've beat up the Huns on our own and not mucked about with this three-ring circus.”

There's truth to this, the men acknowledge.

“We've buried five good men,” says Major Mayne, “and sent nine others home in pieces. I'm not arguing for throwing good money after bad, but, hell's bells, the rest of us are still on our feet. We've still got punch.”