Eastern Approaches (30 page)

From the front of the column we opened up with everything we had. The leading jeep, driven by Sergeant Almonds of the Coldstream Guards, drove straight at the enemy with all its guns firing and was already well past the road block when an incendiary bullet hit it in the petrol tank and set it ablaze. Another followed and met the same fate. The Bredas in particular, gave our opponents a considerable advantage, while the blazing jeeps furnished a light to aim by. Then, after a time the combined fire of our leading vehicles, now dispersed on both sides of the road, began to tell and there was a marked falling off in the violence of the enemy’s opposition.

But it was abundantly clear that we had been expected and it could only be a question of time before fresh reinforcements were brought up. There was no longer any hope of rushing the defences. The element of surprise had gone, and with it all chance of success. Meanwhile time was passing. Hopelessly outnumbered as we were, we could not afford to be caught in the open in daylight. Reluctantly, David gave the order to withdraw. Still returning the enemy’s fire while they could, our vehicles dispersed on the open ground on either side of the road and headed singly and in groups for the Gebel, in a race to reach cover before the sun rose.

First light caught us just short of the foot of the escarpment. Looking back we saw a most unwelcome sight. From Regima, Benina, and the other airfields round Benghazi, aircraft were rising like angry wasps.

We barely had time to run our trucks into the scanty cover afforded by the rocky ravines, with which the face of the escarpment was scarred, before the first aircraft were upon us, bombing and machine-gunning. There were about a dozen of them in the air at a
time. They flew round in a circle, one after another peeling off and swooping down to drop its bombs or fire a long burst from its guns. Now and then one would fly off back to its airfield to collect a fresh supply of ammunition and another would take its place.

But they seemed uncertain of our exact position, and a good deal of their bombing and machine-gunning was going wide of the target. From where we lay we could see a little party of Arabs making their way across the plain, taking their produce to the bazaar; first two greybeards on donkeys and then some women following on foot. At last the Italians had a target they could see. Once again they swooped and dipped; there was a burst from their guns, and the Arabs were left crumpled and struggling on the ground.

Then a lucky shot found the truck containing the bulk of our explosives and ammunition, and set it alight. A column of smoke rose from it, followed by a series of flashes and explosions. Seeing that they were at last on to something, the enemy started methodically to comb the neighbouring
wadis
. Another truck full of explosives went up, taking with it all my personal kit. That was another two trucks gone. My equipment was now reduced to an automatic pistol, a prismatic compass and one plated teaspoon. From now onwards I should be travelling light.

The day wore on, but the enthusiasm of our tormentors showed no signs of waning. Sometimes they would fly off, bombing and strafing empty
wadis
, and we would hope that our troubles were at an end. Then suddenly they would come circling back, flying low over our heads, and we would dive for cover again. Meanwhile there was nothing that we could do. To open up at them would have drawn their fire and betrayed the exact position of our remaining vehicles. For the same reason any attempt to move would have been disastrous. There was nothing for it but to lie low and hope for the best.

From where we were, half way up the escarpment, we looked across the plain to the white walls of Benghazi, with beyond them the blue waters of the Mediterranean. But we gave little thought to what in happier circumstances would have been a delightful view. To us it seemed inevitable that the enemy, having pinned us down from the air, would now send out a mechanized force to mop us up. We scanned
the wide expanse of plain anxiously and heaved a sigh of relief as each successive scurry of sand in the distance resolved itself into a harmless dust devil, and not, as we feared, into the forerunner of a squadron of armoured cars.

The morning passed slowly. A speckled chameleon, hardly noticeable against the stones, crawled out of a hole and looked at us, a miniature gargoyle. Someone put it on his bandana handkerchief. It put its tongue out and turned a rich shade of red.

Soon after midday the circling aircraft flew off one after the other and we were left in peace. As we sucked at our tepid water-bottles, we imagined our tormentors giving a colourful account of their exploits over iced drinks in a cool mess. After a brief respite they reappeared, and, working in relays, kept it up until sunset. Meanwhile, to our great relief, there was still no sign of enemy land forces.

As night fell and the last aircraft flew off, we set to taking stock of our position.

It left much to be desired.

W
E
were separated from our base by 800 miles of waterless desert, dotted with enemy outposts and patrols, now all on the look out for us. We had lost several of our trucks, some of our food and a good deal of our ammunition. The enemy knew, within a few hundred yards, where we were. Twenty miles away in Benghazi there was an enemy garrison, presumably at that very moment preparing a sortie against us. We had already had a taste of what the Luftwaffe and the Regia Aeronautica could do, and might expect that the experience would be repeated at frequent intervals all the way back to Kufra.

After dark we were joined by the little party that had attacked the fort. They had succeeded in their task. They had stormed and taken the fort, killing or capturing the bewildered Italians who manned it. But the cost had been heavy. Bob Melot had been badly wounded about the legs and body by a hand-grenade; Chris Bailey had been shot through the lung; one of the N.C.O.s, Corporal Laird, had had his arm shattered. All were in considerable pain. The first thing was to get the wounded back to the doctor. We made them as comfortable as we could in the backs of our trucks and set out up the escarpment.

It was a nasty drive. Our way led across precipitous country. If we went fast the pain caused to the wounded by the jolting became unbearable. If we went slow we were in danger of being caught by the daylight in the open at the mercy of enemy planes. When I was not driving I sat with Chris, who was lying on a bedding roll perched up on the top of the petrol cans and paraphernalia with which the truck was filled. Though every jolt and lurch of the truck hurt him, he was as cheerful and gay as ever.

We reached the
wadi
where we had left the doctor just before dawn. He was there and took charge of the wounded. Everything seemed much the same as when we had left it thirty-six hours earlier. We
divided ourselves up between the different
wadis
, camouflaged the trucks, driving them into patches of scrub or up against rocks and pulling camouflage nets over them. Guardsman Duncan arrived as though by magic with mugs of strong sweet thick tea, which he could always be counted upon to produce under any circumstances. Then, as dawn was breaking, we lay down to get some sleep while we could.

The first part of the day passed quietly enough. In the intervals of inspecting our camouflage and discussing our future movements, I interrogated the Italian prisoners who had been captured in the fort. Like everyone else in the neighbourhood, they seemed to have had warning of our impending arrival, but failed to connect it with themselves in their own cosy little fort, so that in the event it had come as a very severe shock to them. Now that they had had time to sum up the position, they were frankly terrified, for they had no doubt in their minds whatever that, when they had been interrogated, they would be killed. To them it seemed inconceivable that anyone in our position would burden themselves with useless mouths or alternatively release prisoners who could betray their position. And so they drew touching pictures of aged parents and chubby children awaiting them at home and begged us to be merciful. No sooner had I reassured them on this point, than their attention was once again distracted, this time by the activities of their own side.

Soon after it got light, the air sentries, from their look-outs on the hilltops, had signalled the first enemy ‘recce’ plane searching for us. Now others followed. But evidently our camouflage was too good for them. We lay quiet behind our respective bushes and stones and felt a little more optimistic about the future. If the enemy failed to discover us before dark, we should have the whole of the following night in which to increase the distance which separated us from him and would thus gain a valuable start. We were careful not to move or to do anything else which might betray our position.

It was then that we saw the jeep. It was one of ours and it was driving towards us from a neighbouring
wadi
at a good brisk pace. As it came it sent up a column of dust. I never discovered who was driving it or what had induced him to set out on his early morning round of visits.

We were not the only people who saw it. For some time an enemy
plane had been circling overhead looking for us in a desultory manner. On the appearance of the jeep it came lower in order to investigate. The jeep continued its headlong progress in our direction, the dust billowing out behind it. The plane circled and then turned and flew off in the direction of Benghazi.

Could it be that it had not seen us after all? I was sharing the cover afforded by a good large boulder with a Royal Australian Air Force pilot who had come with us to arrange for air-supplies, should we need them. Cautiously we put our heads out from behind it. As we did so, the earth all round was kicked up by a burst from the plane’s tail-gunner. Hurriedly we dived back. ‘This,’ said the Australian, ‘is going to be a shaky do.’

He was right.

The enemy had not wasted the intervening night. The neighbouring airfields had been heavily reinforced — at the expense, we learned later, of his troops in the front line at Alamein. Before long the pilot who had discovered us came back accompanied by a swarm of fighters and bombers, which settled down to circle monotonously over our
wadi
, diving down, heedless of the small-arms fire coming up at them, to discharge bombs and cannon into what was left of our transport, and into anything they could see moving. Lying on that bare hillside under a blazing sun, I have seldom felt more disagreeably exposed.

This time there was no pause for lunch and a midday siesta, or if there was, the pilots were working in shifts and we did not notice it. My watch had stopped, and the sun seemed to move incredibly slowly across the sky. There were always twenty or thirty aircraft in the air over our heads. As the day wore on, first one truck and then another was hit and caught fire.

Watching the plane circling overhead and wondering where the next bomb or the burst from their cannon would strike, any distraction was welcome and I found myself calculating the minimum number of trucks required to get us home. As truck after truck disintegrated before our eyes, it became clear that it would be a tight fit. And then there was the water and the petrol, can after can of which was being spilt out into the sand. ‘Shaky do’, it seemed to me, summed up the position very neatly.

Eventually, with sickening deliberation, the sun went down; the last aircraft cleared its guns and flew off home to supper; and we turned once again to computing our losses and our assets. Considering the strength and the duration of the air attack, comparatively few of us had been killed or wounded. But we were short of transport, short of food, short of water and our only remaining wireless set had been blown up.

Several trucks were still blazing and by their light we inspected the others. Some of those which had been hit seemed capable of repair. In the end we came to the conclusion that if we jettisoned everything except the barest necessities and if every jeep and truck was loaded to its maximum capacity, there would be just enough transport for everyone.

The situation as far as food, water and petrol were concerned was less promising. Food and water were shortest. If we ate and drank barely enough to keep us alive, with luck there should be enough to last us the 400 miles to Jalo, which, if all had gone well, we should find in the hands of the Sudan Defence Force. If all had not gone well, we should have to think again when we reached Jalo. Sufficient, we felt, unto the day. …

Our calculations were interrupted by a sudden torrent of excited Italian. Following up the noise, I found our three prisoners in tears with spades in their hands. A perplexed Sergeant was standing over them with a tommy-gun. Seeing no reason why they should not be usefully employed, he had decided to make them dig graves for our men who had been killed. But the Italians, on being handed spades and seeing that he was carrying a tommy-gun, jumped to the conclusion that, in true Fascist style, they were being made to dig their own graves. Once again they took a great deal of reassuring.

Before we moved off there was a hard question to be decided; what we were to do with the wounded. A long and necessarily arduous journey, under a blinding sun, in open trucks, over rough country lay before us. We were likely to run into all kinds of trouble before we reached our destination. Already the wounded had spent one whole day under constant air attack. Were we justified in exposing them to further danger and exhaustion? In the end the doctor decided to risk it in the case of Bob Melot and Corporal Laird. Chris Bailey and some
of the other wounded he decided were too ill to move any further; even the journey of the night before had tried them severely. We accordingly made them as comfortable as we could where they were and left behind a medical orderly and one of the Italian prisoners with instructions to drive into Benghazi next day under a Red Cross flag and ask them to send out an ambulance for them. It was a hard decision and we left them reluctantly.

It was a long time before we received news of them, though we knew from our own rearguard, who had stayed behind to watch, that the Italians had come to fetch them. Then, many months later, we heard that they had died in hospital in Benghazi.

Now, in the light of the burning trucks, we divided ourselves up into two main parties, and a third smaller party under David Stirling, who was going to try to collect various stragglers who had not yet been accounted for, and catch us up later.

Then, having filled our water-bottles and destroyed everything worth taking out of the derelict trucks, we piled into our vehicles and started off into the darkness. My own jeep had a crew of eight, all fortunately travelling as light as I was myself. We drove as best we could by starlight, for it was rough going and we were still too near the enemy to show a light. There was some confusion at first. ‘Les camions français par ici!’ shouted the French. Then we got going.

We did not make much progress that night. The going was bad; there was no moon. Clearly our best course would be to move only as far as the southern edge of the Gebel and take advantage of the comparatively good cover to lie up there for another whole day, in the hope of throwing the enemy off the scent, before we set out on our long trek across the open desert. Just before dawn we halted in what seemed a likely
wadi
, camouflaged the trucks and then settled ourselves into the scrub and rocks near them to await developments.

The transition from darkness to light is a rapid one in the desert. Soon the sun was beating down on us fiercely. With it the flies returned to the attack. Time passed slowly.

Before starting the night before, we had worked out a scale of rations designed to eke out our meagre supplies as far as Jalo. This allowed each of us about a cup of water and a tablespoonful of bully
beef a day. To simplify matters, we decided to eat our rations in the evening. There would be supper, but no breakfast, lunch or tea. Our diet for the last forty-eight hours had been scrappy in the extreme, and now we found ourselves looking forward to the evening meal with painful fixity. The time was about six a.m.

Gordon Alston and I climbed to the top of a nearby hill, from which we had a view of the surrounding country, and made ourselves as comfortable and as invisible as we could inside a rough circle of stones used as a shelter by the Beduin. A ground-sheet spread across it gave us some shade. As the sun moved across the sky we moved our ground-sheet to keep pace with it. The flies buzzed. I could feel the sweat trickling in a steady stream down my spine. I thought about food. And drink — long drinks in tall tumblers with the ice clinking against the sides.

Suddenly our day-dreams were interrupted by the sound of bomb-bursts and machine-gun fire. From our look-out, we could see, some miles away, a swarm of enemy aircraft circling and swooping like wasps round a jam pot. Soon, first one column of smoke and then another showed that they had found what they were looking for. Someone, either Paddy Mayne or David, was catching it again. A fighter, on its way to join in the fun flew right over us, without seeing us. Eventually the aircraft went away and did not come back. In the distance we could still see the smoke from the burning trucks curling up into the sky. Once more we settled down to wait for darkness.

From high in the sky the sun blazed down on us. The flies were worse than ever. Whenever one of us hit out at them, the ground-sheet fell down on us. Time passed very slowly. We watched the sun reach its meridian, stay there for what seemed an unconscionable time, and then, almost imperceptibly begin to sink lower. The aircraft did not come back. In another few hours it would be dark. We gave up thinking of imaginary meals and began to visualize our actual rations; the bully, the biscuit and the cup of water. Time passed slower than ever.

Later we made an exciting discovery; two small and very dirty bits of half-melted barley sugar, forgotten in the pocket of my great coat. We ate them greedily. They seemed as stimulating as a stiff whisky. I suppose because we had not had much to eat for some time.

At last the sun set, sinking below the horizon as quickly as it had risen. In the sudden dusk, we walked down from our hilltop towards the ration truck, where a little group was already gathering. The big moment of the day had arrived.

But it was soon past. A spoonful of bully beef is quickly eaten. The camouflage nets were pulled off the trucks and stowed away, and, feeling refreshed, though by no means sated, we started on the next stage of our journey.

After much floundering about in the dark, one or two abortive excursions up
wadis
that turned out to have no outlet and various other misadventures, we finally emerged from the Gebel into the open desert. The going, by comparison, was now quite good, and in the early hours of the morning by the light of a waning moon, we considerably increased the distance between ourselves and the enemy.

The dawn found us in the middle of a perfectly flat expanse of gravel, stretching as far as the eye could see and dotted here and there with a solitary, scrubby, leafless bush, some eighteen inches high. There can be few places in the world with less natural cover. Hurriedly, before it was quite light, we dispersed the trucks as widely as we could. Then, pulling over them their camouflage nets, enlivened with an occasional twig, we proceeded to convert them into what we hoped optimistically would look from the air like a series of natural mounds or knolls. Having done this, we lay down and composed ourselves hopefully to sleep.