The Iron Stallions (20 page)

Remnants of armoured brigades dribbled in, conferences were held, and the next day developed into more skirmishes, long-distances battles, and the scattering of thin-skinned vehicles on to which they charged until they came up against the deadly 88s.

They tried to find out what was happening from the BBC, but the BBC’s bulletins were directed not at the soldiers but at people in comfortable rooms in England. They ate captured German food and listened with delight as they heard that, with Rommel dashing eastwards as if he’d suddenly gone mad, for a change it was the generals and staff officers who were fleeing for safety. On occasion they fired on their own side in the darkness of evening or early dawn, and one of the subalterns in B Squadron was killed with his crew when he was shot up by a British gun.

Legs ached with continual standing, eyes ached with continual watching and voices began to croak with continual shouting, until finally there was a rest when they were able to wash and change their clothes. Then it all started again and they learned that General Cunningham had been relieved of his command by a man called Ritchie nobody had ever heard of. They were not surprised because it had been clear from the start there had been an absence of firm direction from above.

New tanks and men appeared to replace the ones that had been lost and Josh found himself reorganising crews and rushing them through drill and troop tactics. Some of them had arrived straight from England and the only thing he could tell them was to do what he did and stay close. One or two failed to live up to expectations and vanished, and a few proved better than expected. Aubrey looked thinner and older than when they’d started and Reeves had a dogged look on his face. Winder, like Eddie Orne, looked as if nothing could shake him.

By the end of the fighting, Josh was on his fourth Honey and tank strength had been halved, then quartered, as the desert grew more littered with wrecked guns and vehicles and the mounds of newly-filled graves. Ackroyd summed it up as he wearily handed Josh a mug of tea.

‘We’re right back where we started, sir. Is nobody ever going to win this bloody war?’

To their surprise, they appeared to have won the battle. Rommel, it seemed, had barely escaped destruction and was now back at El Agheila where he had started. Despite their inferior tools and a lot of bad generalship, by sheer courage, dogged determination and spirit, they had defeated some of the most experienced troops in the German army. Unfortunately, it had left them greatly extended and – now that the Japanese, sensing the difficulties, had joined in the war – greatly reduced in strength by the despatch of troops to the Far East.

Baking in the sun under the full blue of the sky, the land stretched away east, west and south, the coarse gravelly surface looking like brown sugar. Clumps of camel thorn sprouted here and there among the rock, the earth tawny- coloured and dead, the dunes sculptured into shapes by the wind. By all normal standards, the desert was no place to fight but, in fact, now that the fighting had died down and they had recovered, they were all healthier, leaner and harder, and slept and moved and thought as well as they ever did.

Then the flaps started to increase in frequency and importance again and Rydderch began to hold conferences once more, his officers round him in a half circle with their map cases, chinagraph pencils and notebooks, learning the situation and what Rommel was up to. They’d known for weeks that something was coming because they were all old hands by this time and had developed a sharper ear for desert sounds and a keener feeling for military moods.

The build-up for the new push appeared in a procession of trucks three hundred miles long from the Nile delta, and every day tanks on railway flat cars chugged towards the front. There was no doubt whatsoever now that another battle was brewing. New tanks, Grants mounting a 75 mm gun and new six-pounder anti-tank weapons arrived. Cairo was emptied of troops and a curious air of expectancy hung over the desert. This time it was going to be different because the idea of a continuous line of defences had been dropped in favour of a vast minefield with troops sealed up in isolated forts or ‘boxes’, like the squares with which the British infantry had faced Napoleon’s cavalry at Waterloo. While they held firm, it was thought, the enemy would not dare by-pass them in case they sortied out in the traditional manner to cut his lines of communication.

As they stood drinking tea, they watched the army moving up. Tanks crossed the desert like battle fleets and the activity along the lines of supply increased. Co-operation with the RAF had been improved, though they were still outnumbered in the air and the Germans were still building up their forces as they well knew. It was expected that they’d be caught off-balance by the British attack, however, because they were now almost ready and were hourly expecting the order to move forward.

Sitting alongside his tank that evening, Josh read his latest letters from home. Jocelyn was a poor correspondent and her letters always had a dashed-off look. She had not ended as she usually did, ‘I love you, Jocelyn,’ but simply ‘Love, Jocelyn.’ He re-read the letter, looking for terms of endearment, but it was singularly short on them. Her introduction had changed from ‘My Darling Josh,’ to simply ‘Darling’ and, while it didn’t necessarily mean anything, it worried him, because she never really informed him what was happening, as though she couldn’t have cared less about passing on news. He desperately wanted to know how the house was and, oddly enough, how the children were whom they’d taken in, but she never bothered to tell him and all he learned came from Wightman, the solicitor, who seemed to be suggesting between the lines that Jocelyn hadn’t quite come up to scratch. His mother also seemed to be dropping hints, but was careful not to say anything, and it was Rosanna who let him know that she had been in London for a month.

‘They’ve stopped the bomming,’ she pointed out. ‘It’s safe now.’

They were waiting on a ridge, a line of light tanks and armoured cars, their crews aware of the tension, when their notice was drawn to a strange pillar of dust moving from the south of the box at Bir Hacheim where the Fighting French stood on guard. Westwards there was another low ridge pitted with camel thorn, an occasional cairn of stones thrown up by Bedouin pilgrims, and then the limitless desert, as empty as the sea.

There was a full moon that night and by its light they saw German aeroplanes passing overhead and heard the thud- thud of bombs as they pelted the roadways and the camps towards the rear. During the night five trucks and a 15 cwt turned up, their crews asking for food, water and petrol. The officer in command was a tired-looking man with a red beard. ‘This–’ he gestured sarcastically at his lorries ‘–is what the army laughingly knows as Groat’s Force. I’m Groat. We’ve been jumped so many times this is all that’s left.’

The following morning Josh was wakened by Ackroyd. ‘Lieutenant Cosgro asks if you could join him,’ he said. ‘Something’s up, I think.’

Scrambling from his sleeping bag, aware of the damp that soaked the material with dew, Josh slipped into his boots and moved forward to the ridge. Aubrey was there with Winder, pointing to the south. There were a few flares in the sky to the west, then, as the light increased, it was possible to make out black dots in the haze that filled the valley.

‘Looks like a regiment of Jerry tanks,’ Winder said.

Josh stared at it. ‘Bigger than that,’ he decided. ‘More like a brigade. We’d better report them to headquarters.’

Rydderch seemed to have been informed already. ‘They’re a long way off still,’ he said. ‘And you should be all right. Division reports that Groat’s Force is right alongside you to the north.’

‘Groat’s Force has already made contact,’ Josh said. ‘It consists of five lorries and a 15 cwt.’

There was a long silence then the voice came again. ‘What do you see?’

‘It’s hazy and we can’t make out what they consist of but there are a hell of a lot of them.’

‘Can you get any nearer?’

‘If we get any nearer,’ Winder murmured, ‘we’ll be able to fix bayonets and charge.’

They edged forward in silence and stopped to look again. On their left in the distance they could now see a leaguer of British tanks. They had their bivouacs up and didn’t seem to be aware of what was coming towards them.

Josh reached for the microphone. ‘They’re Germans,’ he reported to Rydderch. ‘They’re coming straight for us. I’m about two thousand yards ahead of your position and they’re about the same distance from us.’

As Aubrey touched his elbow, he took another look. From the ridge the ground sloped down to the smooth expanse of a salt pan, and as he lifted his binoculars again his heart sank. Spread out on a wide frontage he could now clearly see the squat shapes of at least two hundred tanks, their height and shape distorted by the haze and the fact that some of the crews were sitting on top of the turrets. They were moving north-east, an awe-inspiring mass heading obliquely across their front.

‘It’s the whole bloody Afrika Korps!’ Winder yelled as they scrambled to their feet. ‘The buggers have attacked first!’

There was a frantic scuttling about as bedding was collected and half-cooked breakfasts were swallowed on the run. Glancing to his left, Josh was about to fire a Very light to warn the other tank regiment when he saw them suddenly galvanised into action. They were already too late, however, and as ominous black puffs of smoke rose among them, tanks, in the action of turning, burst into flames and came to a stop. Not one escaped.

The Germans had not had a single casualty and were still heading north-east, but slowly as if they were puzzled. The Honeys’ shots seemed to make no difference and the German line came on, solid and threatening as ever.

As the 19th Lancers moved off, there was a thud and a nearby tank was hit. As it ground to a stop, nose down, an enormous black smoke ring coiled up. Two men leapt out, blood spurting from them, and flung themselves flat to the ground behind it, out of the machine gun fire. Everything that had been strapped on the outside was scattered about them, some of it smouldering, and from inside, beyond the red and white glare roaring from the hatch holes, came the inhuman screaming of a trapped man.

Firing to the north seemed to make jelly of the horizon, then two arrowheads of Stukas appeared, hanging in the sky, crank-winged and ugly, looking for all the world with their fixed undercarriages like the groping claws of stooping eagles. The first explosions threw up puffs of sand and clouds of black smoke which streamed away in the wind, and as they saw the tracers hitting the sand and bouncing away like golden golf balls, all down the line engines roared and tracks squealed as the tanks separated to make room to manoeuvre.

‘Somebody’s bought it!’ It was Aubrey’s voice.

One of the tanks at the far end of the line had gone up in an incredible rose of flame and the smoke was lifting into the air across the desert like the black stroke of a charcoal crayon.

With the turret shut, it was suffocating inside the Honey, and the air seemed to be swaying backwards and forwards, snatched first one way then the other. Somebody up ahead was firing back at the aeroplanes, then Josh saw the desert erupt in lines of explosions. As the detonations convulsed the air, it dawned on him that the attack had been meant not for them but for the minefield where they had been waiting. Whole strings of mines had erupted at the concussion, leaving gaps through which the enemy tanks could pass.

As the smoke cleared, the Germans came on fast, and almost the first shot clanged against the bogies of one of the end Honeys so that its track snaked out. Its crew baled out, grabbing for personal belongings and food.

There was no choice about what to do, and they swung into the attack at full speed on zigzag courses, charging like gigantic iron stallions over the uneven sand and rocks in a cloud of dust, accepting destruction in the hope of stopping the attack.

The radio crackled and the Colonel’s voice came. ‘Father to Caro Leader. What’s happening out there?’

‘We’re being overrun,’ Josh said. ‘They’re coming at us in strength.’

Dust fluttered about inside the tank. Robinson was stowing shells ready for the fight as more dark shapes became visible in the dust cloud in front.

‘Estimate figures nine oh to one oh oh,’ Josh reported. ‘Mark IVs, I think.’

His eyes narrowed as he wondered what in God’s name he could order his men to do, he lifted his binoculars and saw the German tanks were closer now, four deep, the sun catching the serrations on the front of their armour and shining through the muzzle tips of their guns.

‘Make every shot tell,’ he found himself saying. ‘We’re fighting it out. Here! Do what you can then disengage. Good luck!’

Almost at once the tank on his left fired. Then his own gun cracked and he saw one of the squat shapes ahead stop dead, smoke pouring from it.

‘Good shot, Harbottle,’ he said. ‘See if you can do it again.’

As the gun fired once more, another of the Mark IVs started to smoke. The German crew baled out quickly, but someone turned a machine gun on them and they fell to the sand. The gun was banging like a piston now but he saw the tank next to him stop dead, its turret blazing. A man scrambled out, his hair on fire and threw himself to the sand.

A second followed, his clothes smouldering, and the two of them fought to save each other. Nobody else appeared.

The somnambular approach of the Germans seemed to have stopped, however, and they were beginning to weave and swerve about. Considering how many of them there were and how few Honeys were opposing them, Josh could only assume they’d been ordered not to get embroiled too quickly. Then he saw that the Germans were swinging north, presenting their sides to the Honeys again. Perhaps there was something bigger up there they had seen.

A voice broke in on the net, young and sounding shocked and scared. ‘We shall need the doc. I’ve got a badly hit man. And one dead…’

The Germans were still creeping past, just out of range now, half-obscured by drifting brown smoke.