Take or Destroy! (8 page)

A group of men shuffled forward, none too willingly, because it was the oldest dodge in the army to ask who were birdwatchers or Baptists or who could ride a bicycle, and then give you the job of cleaning out latrines.

This time, it was different.

Murdoch turned to Jacka, the commando sergeant. ‘I want an assault course constructed. So that they can learn to do the things they might have to do. I want it finished by tonight.’

As the others tramped away, the engineers stared at Jacka.

‘What the hell’s an assault course?’ they demanded.

Jacka grinned. ‘A few ups and a few downs,’ he said. ‘A few unders and a few overs. That sort of thing.’

‘Where do we get the gear? There’s nothing here.’

‘No, there isn’t, is there?’ Jacka looked at the speaker contemptuously.
‘‘Then find the bloody stuff!’
he roared.

It was their first lesson in independence and in no time they’d begged, borrowed or stolen from neighbouring camps or the intervening desert, nets, poles, rope, boxes, boards, spades, rolls of barbed wire, even wrecked cars, old lorries and one rusty tank.

The rest of the men had grouped round Murdoch who was balancing a rifle and bayonet in his hand. He looked murderous despite his glasses.

‘Weapon training,’ he said quietly. ‘You all know about weapons and how to handle ‘em. Some o’ you might even have had a pot-shot at a Jerry. In the commandos, the aim o’ weapon training is no’ to take pot-shots, but to
kill.’
His voice rose slightly so that he seemed to be the embodiment of a diabolical will, and anyone who’d thought up to then that there was any other aim to weapon training realized he’d been kidding himself.

They were all a little sober as they headed back to camp at the end of the morning and all a great deal dustier after four hours of solid marching to see what they could do.

‘Gawd chase me up and down Wapping Steps,’ Belcher said, brushing the sweat from his eyes. ‘I feel like ten men - nine dead and one paralysed all down one side. Who’s that feller think ‘e is, anyway? Bew Guest?’

By this time a lot of Jacka’s assault course had been put up and there was a contrivance of derricks and wires stretching across the sand from one of the huts. ‘What’s yon for?’ Keely asked.

‘You’ll soon find out!’

The words had an ominous ring and there were no further questions. They’d already learned that the commandos weren’t in the habit of enlarging on things too much, and asking them for explanations was about as rewarding as trying to nail jelly to a wall. It seemed safer to wait and see.

Training was no part of Hockold’s business at this stage because he had too many other things to attend to in Cairo.

Kirstie gave him the best smile she could manage as he appeared. In Murray’s office he was brisk, keen and to the point. With her he was grimly silent and she felt it her duty - even more than her duty - to give him a degree of encouragement. It had clearly worked so far because, instead of crashing past, taking half the furniture with him as he had the first time he’d appeared, he stopped by her desk.

‘How about a drink when we’ve finished?’ he barked.

She beamed at him, and he blushed and vanished into Murray’s room. Murray was on the telephone. He seemed to spend half his life on the telephone. He waved Hockold to a chair and went on with his conversation. When he’d finished, he seemed to surface slowly, lit a cigarette, and smiled.

‘Things are looking up,’ he said. ‘There’s another meeting and Bryant telephoned to say he’s got you half a dozen launches and something to go alongside the pier.’

Hockold didn’t reply and Murray looked quickly at him.

‘It’s a beginning,’ he said.

‘Yes, sir. But I’m a bit worried about those guns.’

‘So am I. But we’ll come up with something.’

Hockold drew a deep breath. ‘I was thinking of tanks, sir,’ he said.

Murray’s eyebrows shot up. ‘Tanks?’ he said. ‘Tanks can’t operate in the dark.’

‘They might, sir. After all, we always used the dark to get into position, so why not use it to fight? We did at Beda Farafra last year. Jerry was all round us, so we took off the black-out shields and switched on the lights. They were so surprised, it worked.’

‘You’ll need more than headlights,’ Murray grunted.

‘We could arrange for the RAF to drop flares and fit extra lights on the turrets. We don’t need anything big. Or anything very new. Honeys, for instance. They’re fast. There’s a wide slip alongside the mole and if we could get them on to the beach they could go up there. If they’re quick, all those 47s could well be facing the wrong way.

Murray pressed a bell and Kirstie appeared. She didn’t look at Hockold.

‘Get me Alec Gatehouse,’ Murray said. ‘If anyone knows whether it can be done, he will.’

Bryant and de Berry were more forthcoming this time but not much more friendly towards each other. ‘So far I’ve got you half a dozen launches,’ Bryant said. ‘Three naval Fairmile Type Bs, and three RAF high-speed rescue jobs which are under naval command. There’s also an Egyptian water-boat,
Horambeb,
to go alongside the pier for your troops to land across. She draws only four feet unladen. We can mount guns.’

‘How about the launches?’

‘MLs - three-pounders and machine guns. HSLs - stern-mounted Oerlikons and waist-mounted point-threes in turrets.’

It didn’t seem much and Bryant seemed to recognize the fact. ‘At the moment that’s as far as I can commit myself,’ he said.

‘They
won’t get us ashore,’ de Berry pointed out. ‘And we have to bridge the water gap.’ He smiled. ‘Like Jonah and the whale which vomited him on to dry land. He formed a neat parabola through the air, I believe.’

‘Something that’s impractical with tanks,’ Murray interjected sharply.

Bryant’s head jerked round. ‘When did we start talking about tanks?’

‘Just now.’ Murray made himself sound casual. ‘We’re proposing to use them.’

‘At night?’

Murray smiled. ‘That’s what everybody says. I said it myself at first. But why not? 1st and 10th Armoured are moving up in the dark when Monty starts his battle. I think it’d shake ‘em rotten in Qaba if they saw British tanks waddling up the main street.’

Bryant grunted. ‘For tanks you need landing craft.’

Murray grinned. ‘I happen to know you have one or two in this neck of the woods.’

‘They’re obsolete.’ Bryant made a wash-out gesture with his hand. ‘They’re Mark 1s and they’ve never been used as landing craft because they were no sooner built than they were proved out-of-date.’

Murray’s bulldog jaw stuck out and he looked as obdurate as Bryant. ‘We’re not asking for a Spithead review,’ he growled. ‘Just a landing craft. And I know there’s one in Alex.’

Bryant’s eyebrows shot up and Murray continued. ‘She carries three forty-ton tanks one behind the other,’ he said. ‘Steams at a nominal ten knots; and discharges her cargo through her bows. She draws three foot six inches forward, and she was sent out here with others in sections as deck cargo. She was ferrying supplies and, until she moved to Alex, she was at Kabrit in the Great Bitter Lake.’

Bryant seemed amused. ‘You’ve done your homework,’ he admitted. ‘Very well, you can have her. We can even mount machine guns.’ For the first time he seemed to be giving his full co-operation. ‘I’m trying also to get you a frigate but it’s unlikely. All our spare units are earmarked for the feint on the day Montgomery’s battle starts.’

‘Six launches, a water-boat, an LCT and the hope of a frigate,’ Murray said. ‘You’ll have to do better than that.’

They seemed to have reached an impasse once more. Hockold looked at de Berry. ‘What about a raid on the airfield?’ he asked. ‘We need to make them switch on their searchlights so we can see. Flares would help too - as near the town as possible.’

‘We could do that.’ De Berry nodded. ‘We might even be able to make the raid seem bigger than it is. They’ve been experimenting with some new metallic strip. I can get hold of some.’

Bryant was frowning heavily at Murray. ‘What losses do you estimate?’ he asked.

‘Thirty per cent.’

‘I’d put it higher than that. Can’t you work out some way of withdrawing into the desert to be picked up by the army as they come through. You’ll be holding the centre of the town and the road to the airfield. You might be able to get out that way.’

Hockold stared at the map. ‘I’m still worried about getting
in,’
he said.

It was a thought that worried Hockold a great deal because, with the arrival of the Afrika Korps, the war had become very professional in the last year. In 1940 and 1941 when there’d been only the Italians to attend to, it had even been enjoyable, with the sun rising in a red ball in the mornings and the world clean and good, and a whisky and water at night out of an enamelled mug near a flapping tent. It had been German efficiency that had shaken them out of their self-satisfaction.

The memory was a bitter one and all the worse for coming back to him as he ate a hurried meal in the officers’ club with Kirstie McRuer. Around them the usual desk-drivers from all three services were sipping their pink gins and discussing the latest ‘buzzes’ from the desert. Cairo was a place where everybody seemed to be busy yet nothing seemed to get done, and the thought reminded Hockold how little progress he’d made.

‘We still haven’t picked up any signallers,’ he pointed out.

Kirstie made a note in a pocket book. ‘I’ll see what we can do,’ she said. ‘But it won’t be easy. Everybody’s busy with the coming battle and the general’s a stickler for getting what he wants. That’s why you’re stuck with me instead of a man.’

The words took the edge from Hockold’s worry, and his smile was encouraging. ‘You’re doing fine, really,’ he said. ‘But I’ve got to have everything in hand by tomorrow. I must have a model of Qaba, too, and some demolition experts who won’t make mistakes when the bullets are flying.’

She looked up over her plate. ‘How bad will it be, George?’

The question was unexpected and Hockold was silent for a while.

‘Not bad,’ he said eventually.

Her eyes shone with her anger. ‘I don’t believe it. The Germans know the Eighth Army’s going to attack soon. They won’t be unready.’

Hockold said nothing because he knew she was right. The Germans
would
be ready. When they’d chased the Italians back in 1940, he’d come out of the desert with torn trousers, matted hair and a lorry full of Zeiss binoculars. But when they’d gone the other way it had been different, and he could still remember the big fire in Derna and the explosions and the smoke, and drunken soldiers staggering from the Naafi store with crates of whisky. He’d often thought since that he ought to have made more effort than he had to stop the rout, but it had been so colossal it had been more than one man - or many men, for that matter - could handle, and in the end he’d gone along with the rest.

He badly wanted to get his own back for it, but he’d also learned from experience that you didn’t just lash out at the Afrika Korps in a fit of pique and hope for the best. You had to think of every tiny detail, because if you found yourself short of something you desperately needed in the desert it could make all the difference between life and death.

He realized Kirstie was watching his face, and tried to be nonchalant. ‘It’ll be a bit messy perhaps,’ he agreed. ‘Nothing we can’t cope with, though.’

‘But at what cost?’

Hockold shrugged again. ‘Always a cost,’ he admitted. ‘Oldest military cliché in the world is that you can’t make an omelette without breaking eggs. Somebody’s bound to get hurt.’

‘Take care, George!’

He looked up quickly. Her eyes were clear and bright and steady.

‘Does it matter?’

‘The one thing I’ve never liked about my job here,’ she said, ‘is meeting people and then learning that they’ve been killed. It’s something I can’t ever get used to.’

‘I’ll try to bring back the news of our success personally.’

He seemed suddenly to ease with her and she smiled. ‘Do that, George. Try to do that.’

He jerked a hand at a military driver waiting with a staff car near the entrance to the club. ‘As somebody much cleverer than me once said,’ he pointed out, ‘it all depends on that article.’ He paused. ‘Don’t think they’ll let me down though,’ he ended. ‘I wonder how they’re settling in.’

At that particular moment, they weren’t.

In Tent 7, his eyes anxious, Private Sugarwhite sat on his blankets and sucked at a cigarette. It was one of the Victory Vs to which everybody was reduced from time to time. They were said to be made in India but everybody was convinced they were manufactured locally from bat shit and camel dung scraped up round the Pyramids. In his pack he had a tin of fifty Players but he had no intention of producing them in the company he was having to keep at that moment. It was much easier to make a martyr of himself. The misery even seemed a comfort in the prevailing gloom.

He’d never been in such a rotten tent, he decided.

Opposite him was the big ugly brute who’d flattened him the night before and next door to him the lunatic who’d started it all, still caterwauling his blocked-nose catch-phrases as though he were defying the army to get him down, so that the man next to him gave him a weary look. He was a Royal Welch from Barnsley and beyond him there was an East Yorks from Wales. On his other side was an Argyll and a gloomy-looking Durham, while opposite there was a Rifleman who looked like a gipsy, and a Middlesex who’d never stopped reading from the minute he’d arrived. The tent’s senior commando was a silent ex-Grenadier lance-corporal called Cobbe who knew all there was to know about war because he’d walked all the way from Brussels to Dunkirk in 1940 and been among the last to leave.

To Private Sugarwhite they looked the most unprepossessing crew he’d ever seen, and at any moment now, he suspected, the ginger-haired madman who appeared to be called Waterhouse was going to start his song and dance about his name and they’d all start rolling about in heaps again.

He was just mentally flexing his fists at the thought when the Royal Welch on his left, who was digging into his kitbag for note-paper and pencil for a letter home, looked round and sniffed.