Eastern Approaches (28 page)

Then I set off at a brisk pace through the gate followed by David and Corporal Cooper, but not by the two Italians who had shuffled off into the shadows as soon as they saw there was trouble brewing. My words had not been without effect. As we passed him, the sentry on the gate made a stupendous effort and presented arms, almost falling over backwards in the process.

By the time we got back to the car it was nearly light, and we were relieved to find that Randolph and Corporal Rose had disposed of it in the lower part of a half-demolished house. Hurriedly we set about camouflaging it as best we could with any old bits of planks and sacking that came to hand, and then looked round for somewhere to hide ourselves. For there could be no question of getting back to the Gebel in daylight, and the only alternative was to lie up in Benghazi itself.

On further investigation, the upper storey of the house where we had hidden the car proved to be empty. It consisted of two rooms
reached by an outside staircase in a courtyard. The shutters were down and the whole place looked reassuringly derelict. We went inside and closed the door after us.

We might have been very much worse off. There were some tins of bully in the car and someone had a flask of rum. Our quarters were not luxurious, but at any rate there was plenty of floor space on which to lie down and go to sleep.

As we were settling in, we heard a roaring, and, looking out of the window we saw the early morning sky filled with flight after flight of German and Italian bombers coming over the city at roof-top level, doing victory rolls. They had, I suppose, just come back from the front or from a raid on Alexandria.

Gradually the town began to wake up all round us. Many of the Arabs spent the night in the palm groves outside, in order to avoid the bombing, and we could not be sure that suddenly someone would not burst in on us. Through a hole in the wall we watched a wizened old Arab woman next door cooking her breakfast in the courtyard. On the other side of the road, as we looked through the closed shutters, we could see a German Sub-Area Headquarters starting its day’s work, with dispatch riders dashing in and out on motor bicycles, and busy-looking officers arriving and leaving. Further down the street an Arab shop was opening its shutters. From where we were we could hear the passers-by in the street below talking in German, Italian and Arabic.

It grew hotter. After we had eaten we each took it in turn to watch whilst the others slept. We still had an uneasy feeling that our presence in the town might somehow have become known and that there might be search parties out after us.

The hours passed. Then, suddenly, as we lay dozing, we heard the sound that we had been half expecting all day: heavy footsteps ascending the stairs.

Randolph, who was keeping watch, was outside first. There was an exclamation and a stampede. Snatching our tommy-guns we reached the door to see a frightened-looking Italian sailor disappearing into the street, whilst Randolph, his beard bristling, stood majestically at the top of the stairs.

Had the intruder been sent to spy on us, or was he simply on the
look out for loot? Had he noticed that we were in British uniform? If so, would he do anything about it? We had no means of telling. For the next couple of hours we sat clasping hand-grenades and tommy-guns ready to give any visitors a warm reception. But no one came.

As soon as it was dark, we left our temporary home and set out for a walk round Benghazi, past the Cathedral and along the sea front, keeping a sharp look out for anything that might be of interest on our next visit. For we were determined to return under, we hoped, more auspicious conditions. We walked down the middle of the street arm in arm, whistling and doing our best to give the impression that we had every right to be there. Nobody paid the slightest attention to us. On such occasions it’s one’s manner that counts. If only you can behave naturally, and avoid any appearance of furtiveness, it is worth any number of elaborate disguises and faked documents.

Our most interesting discovery was a couple of motor torpedo boats tied up to the quayside opposite a large square building, which, from the lights blazing in all the windows and the sentries on duty at the gate, seemed to be some kind of Headquarters. So interesting that we decided that it would be worth trying to blow them up on our way out of town. We accordingly went back to our temporary quarters, extricated the battle-waggon and returned with a supply of bombs.

But our luck was out. As we drew up by the side of the road opposite to where the boats were moored, we saw that in our absence a sentry had been posted there. He looked at us suspiciously. I got out of the car, and, while Corporal Rose tried to get near enough to slip a bomb on one of the boats, I engaged the sentry in conversation.

But it was no use. The sentry was far more interested in what Corporal Rose was doing than in what I was saying, and two more sentries were now watching the scene with increasing interest from the building on the other side of the road. We had missed our opportunity. Reluctantly David called off Corporal Rose and we got back into the car and drove off, screeching disconsolately. Our attempts at sabotage seemed doomed to failure, but we had thoroughly spied out the land and felt by now like old inhabitants of Benghazi. We must hope for better luck another time.

Meanwhile, time was passing and we wanted to be in the Gebel
before first light. We made for the Benina road. On the way out of the town we drove for a short time in a convoy of enemy trucks. Then came the road block. Once again the sentry accepted my statement that we were Staff officers, and in a few minutes we were bowling along the road towards the Gebel.

We reached our rendezvous with the Long-Range Desert Group at six on Sunday morning, exactly twenty-four hours late. They had long since given us up and were having breakfast, preparatory to moving off. Hungrily we threw ourselves upon mugs of tea and steaming mess tins of porridge.

O
UR
journey back across the desert to Siwa was on the whole uneventful. But once in the night we heard a rumble of big guns away to the north and David, who made a detour to visit Eighth Army Headquarters, had his car shot up by marauding enemy fighters at a place called Bir Hakim, soon to become famous for the stand made there by the Free French under General Koenig.

Back at Siwa, the thing that I remember most clearly was the long-awaited plunge into the clear bubbling waters of Cleopatra’s pool, a luxury to which we had looked forward all through the parching days in the desert, when there had been very little water for drinking and none at all for washing. But we were in a hurry to get back to Cairo to report and make plans for the future.

In such a hurry that, half-way between Alexandria and Cairo, the battle-waggon left the road and turned over, and it was not until two or three days later that I regained consciousness, through a haze of morphia, to find that I was in hospital in Alexandria with a fractured collar bone, a broken arm and what seemed to be a fractured skull. The rest of the party were all more or less out of action, except for David, who was hardly hurt at all.

At the beginning of July I left hospital to convalesce, and spent the weeks that followed in enforced, but not disagreeable, idleness, waiting for the plaster to be taken off my limbs. Various people came to see me on their way through Alexandria, where I was staying in great luxury with the Teddy Peels. George Jellicoe, who had just joined the S.A.S., came with Georges Berger of the Free French Squadron. They were just starting by submarine for an operation in Crete, and their visit was a reminder that our ultimate goal lay beyond the Mediterranean, in Europe. While in Crete they were betrayed to the enemy and, though Jellicoe got away, Berger spent the rest of the war in a German prison camp.

Meanwhile, to pass the time, as I lay idle on the beach at Sidi Bish, I started to learn modern Greek from the many fair Greek ladies who adorned it. It might, I felt, come in useful.

Then one day David appeared. He had just come back from the desert and was full of plans for a further large-scale raid on Benghazi. He wanted me to come back to Cairo with him at once and start making preparations. A doctor was found to certify that I was once again medically A.
I
, and we set out.

One night, while we were in Cairo, we dined at the Embassy. The party was a distinguished one: Mr. Churchill, the Chief of the Imperial General Staff, General Smuts and General Alexander, the latter newly arrived from England. Wondering what they had come out to Egypt to do and little realizing that their visit betokened a complete change in the high command, we took the opportunity to put in a word for the S.A.S. We told the distinguished visitors what we planned to do and asked for some equipment to do it with.

I had not seen the Prime Minister since I had become a Member of the House of Commons. Someone had told him of the stratagem which I had employed to extricate myself from the Foreign Office, and this had amused him. ‘Here,’ he said, dragging me up to General Smuts, ‘is the young man who has used the Mother of Parliaments as a public convenience.’

Meanwhile, the plans for a raid on Benghazi had been greeted with enthusiasm at G.H.Q. With such enthusiasm that, by the time they came back to us they were practically unrecognizable. The latest scheme envisaged a major operation against Benghazi, to be carried out in conjunction with similar large-scale operations elsewhere.

The military situation in the Middle East had deteriorated very sharply since May. The gunfire which we had heard on our way back from Benghazi had heralded Rommel’s attack on the Gazala line, which was followed by a general offensive. This had begun at the end of May. Bitter fighting had followed: Knightsbridge, Bir Hakim, the fall of Tobruk. Finally, Rommel’s advance to El Alamein had brought the Afrika Korps to within eighty or ninety miles of Alexandria. In Cairo the staff at G.H.Q. Middle East were burning their files and the Italian colony were getting out their black shirts and Fascist badges in preparation
for Mussolini’s triumphant entry. The Long-Range Desert Group had been forced to leave Siwa in a hurry, and that pleasant oasis was now occupied by a detachment of Fascist Youth, who had been specially sent over from Italy for the forthcoming victory parade. Now, Rommel, having consolidated his position at Alamein, was pouring in supplies through Benghazi and the recently captured port of Tobruk, and at the same time centring all available resources before a knock-out blow against Eighth Army.

Our task was to cause a diversion, thereby interfering with this process. Altogether four operations were planned. We were to attack Benghazi, but this time with a force numbering some two hundred men. At the same time a similar raid was to be made on Tobruk with naval and air support. Two patrols of the Long-Range Desert Group were to raid the airfield at Barce, 50 miles east of Benghazi along the coast. Finally the Sudan Defence Force were to take and hold the oasis of Jalo, which was situated in the desert 300 miles due south of Benghazi. Now that Siwa was in enemy hands, the base for these operations would have to be Kufra, an oasis 800 miles south of Benghazi, which had been captured from the Italians in 1941.

Very considerable preparations and much detailed planning were needed for an operation on this scale. Clearly it was no easy task to transport several dozen vehicles and a couple of hundred men across 800 miles of waterless desert without attracting the attention of the enemy.

While David was busy attending conferences, collecting new recruits, begging, buying or stealing additional transport and equipment, I went down to Faiyum, where the L.R.D.G. had made their home after leaving Siwa, to look at maps with Bill Shaw. I also went down to Alexandria to see the Naval Intelligence Division and have a look at the model of Benghazi which had now been brought up to date and was kept in a closely guarded room, together with an equally handsome model of Tobruk.

For obvious reasons, secrecy was vital, and only a very small number of those taking part in the operations were told what their destination was to be. But long before we were ready to start there were signs that too many people knew too much. At Alexandria a drunken marine
was heard boasting in a canteen that he was off to Tobruk; a Free French officer picked up some startling information at Beirut; one of the barmen at the hotel, who was generally thought to be an enemy agent, seemed much too well informed. Worse still, there were indications that the enemy was expecting the raids and was taking counter-measures.

Eventually the plan was completed and David and I left for Kufra in a Hudson bomber. We first flew due south down the Nile to Wadi Haifa; then westwards across the desert. It was an unpleasant flight. The hot air rising from the scorching surface of the desert made air pockets through which the aircraft fell like a stone. Looking down, we could see beneath us strange red sandstone conformations. We were glad when we finally jolted to a standstill on the airfield at Kufra.

Up to 1931 Kufra, like Siwa, a stronghold of the Senussi, had been visited by only half a dozen Europeans, the first being the German explorer Rohlfs who reached it by camel in 1879 and narrowly escaped with his life. His exploit was repeated by explorers once or twice in the intervening years, while an occasional unwilling European visitor was taken there as a prisoner of the Arabs. Then in 1931 the Italians, determined to consolidate their North African Empire, launched a motorized expedition against Kufra from the north, and once there, easily reduced it with the help of aircraft and artillery, thus mopping up the last pocket of active resistance in Libya.

Ten years later, almost to a day, a Free French column under General Leclerc arrived unexpectedly from Lake Chad, disposed of the Italian garrison without difficulty, and established an Allied base, which was to serve as a jumping-off place for the L.R.D.G. until the end of the Libyan campaign.

The Italians had erected a fort on a hill dominating the oasis. In the middle of the courtyard a Fascist emblem, made of cement and bearing a pompous Latin inscription which no one had bothered to deface, still celebrated the establishment of this outpost of an empire which even then was already beginning to crumble. From the fort one had a good view of the oasis and the surrounding desert. In many ways Kufra resembled Siwa; the same bright green date palms, the same clusters of Arab huts, built of wattles or mud, the same patches of cultivation.
Amongst the palms there were two lakes of brilliant turquoise-blue, so salt that you could float sitting upright in the water as though in an armchair with half your body above the surface. The fort was occupied by a garrison of French and British troops. Our own forces, together with the L.R.D.G., Sudan Defence Force and the party which was to attack Tobruk, were already encamped under the palms, and there we joined them. All the original members of the unit were there and with them a hundred or more new recruits, thrown in to swell our numbers for the largest operation undertaken hitherto.

There was a lot to be done in a short time. The fitters were hard at work on the trucks, some of which had suffered considerably on the long journey down. Some trucks had got lost in the desert between Wadi Halfa and Kufra, and an aircraft was out looking for them. Bill Cumper’s sappers were making bombs, and navigators were busy with their maps. All were cleaning up their weapons. Finally, now that we had the party isolated from outside contacts, all those going on the operation had to be briefed.

Everyone was collected and we unfolded the full plan; we were to rush Benghazi, taking the garrison by surprise, and, once inside, to destroy everything we could lay hands on. If the situation developed favourably, we might even manage to hold out until relief arrived. In any case, we could make it useless to the enemy for quite a time. This news was enthusiastically received by the assembled troops. Now they knew what the little party of sailors was for: they were to take any available ships to the mouth of the harbour and sink them there. They also knew that the purpose of the two light tanks, borrowed from the Tenth Hussars, was to blast their way into Benghazi at the head of our column. (In the event, they stuck in the sand a short distance from Kufra and had to be abandoned.) Altogether, they thought, it sounded a promising plan.

Everywhere little scattered groups sat round the camp fires under the palm trees until late at night talking. Some were coming with us. Others were taking part in the simultaneous and equally ambitious attack on Tobruk, in which a leading part was to be played by a party of German Jews in enemy uniform, who were to bluff their way past the sentries, as the spearhead of a larger force. Nearby, the black troops
of the Sudan Defence Force were preparing for their attack on Jalo, the success of which was vital to us, for we would pass within a few miles of Jalo on our way back from Benghazi, and if it was not by then in Allied hands, our retreat would be cut off. On all sides there was a buzz of anticipation.

Next day our advance party, under Paddy Mayne, started for the Gebel and I went with it. We had a formidable array of vehicles. Of these the greater part were our own, for, although we had a patrol of the L.R.D.G. with us and relied on them to a great extent for navigation, we now owned our own transport. This consisted chiefly of Ford three-tonners, carrying petrol, water and supplies, and a fleet of jeeps, mounted with Vickers-K machine guns, which had been found were invaluable for desert raiding. David came to see us off. He himself would follow with the rest of the party in three or four days’ time. Everyone was in high spirits, and we gave him a cheer as we drove by.

For the first part of the journey we travelled by day and slept at night. North of Kufra the desert was pinkish in colour and full of fantastic rock formations.

On the second day out, I was awakened before dawn by screams of pain. One of the cooks getting breakfast had carelessly thrown petrol on the fire from a bottle. The flame had shot back up the stream of petrol into the bottle which had burst in his face. He was terribly burnt and in agony. We dressed his burns as best we could and, giving him some morphia, sent him back to Kufra in one of the jeeps. It was lucky for him that we were not further out.

For a convoy as big as ours there was only one practicable route from Kufra to the Gebel. Between us and our destination lay the Sand Sea. This was an expanse of deep, soft, fine sand the size of Ireland, ribbed with long parallel dunes several hundred feet high, following each other in monotonous succession like the waves of the sea. The L.R.D.G. had long ago proved that it was not impassable if you knew how to tackle it, but it was bad going for heavy trucks. Accordingly we aimed for Zighen, a point where the Sand Sea narrows down to a bottleneck not more than twenty miles wide. Here we would cross it
and then drive northwards, skirting along its western fringe, and passing through the narrow gap which separates it from the oasis of Jalo, then in enemy hands.

Our crossing of the Sand Sea was something of an ordeal. With increasing frequency the leading truck would suddenly plunge and flounder and then come to an ominous standstill, sinking up to its axles in the soft white sand. Once you were stuck it was no good racing the engine. The wheels only spun round aimlessly and buried themselves deeper than ever. There was nothing for it but to dig yourself out with a spade and then, with the help of sand mats — long strips of canvas with wooden stiffening — back precariously on to the firm ground you had so unwisely left. Then the whole convoy would wait while someone went cautiously on ahead to prospect for a safe way out of our difficulties.

Or else we would find our way barred by a sand dune, or succession of sand dunes. These were best negotiated by rush tactics. If you could only keep moving you were less likely to stick. The jeeps, making full use of their extra range of gears, would lead the way, with the three-tonners thundering along after them like stampeding elephants. Very rarely we all got through safely. Generally someone hesitated half way up and immediately went in up to the running boards in sand. Then out came the spades, sand mats and towing ropes, and the whole dreary business of ‘un-sticking’ would start again.