There were even worse ones in store on the day of the exercise itself; the Colonel, with his genius for complicating things in the interests of keeping his soldiery up to the mark, and satisfying his insatiable regimental ego, had devised an additional wrinkle in the exercise. The place that we eager map-readers were going to have to find in the dark was the Yarhuna Road bridge, which lay about two miles south of the town, on the edge of the desert; on the bridge itself the defending company was to leave a red storm lantern, and anyone who got within sight of it undetected would be adjudged to have found his way home successfully. But that wasn t enough for the Colonel; to add to the sport, and prove how good we were, he had told the Artillery Commander who was providing the defending company that we would engage to stalk the lantern and extinguish it, all unseen and mysterious.
‘He’s been reading too many romantic novels about the ‘Forty-five,’ I told the Adjutant. ‘That bridge’ll be crawling with Gunners; you won’t be able to get a mouse through.’
‘Come, come,’ he said, ‘where’s your Highland craft and cunning? All you have to do is sneak through the gloom like Rob Roy, taking care not to stand on twigs and milk-bottles, gliding stealthily past the drowsing sentinels —′
‘Are you taking part?’ I demanded coldly.
‘Not a prayer,’ he said. ‘I’ll be in bed, dreaming about the goodies I’m going to buy with your hundred lire after McAuslan finds the source of the Nile. Have fun.’
That reminded me that the real object of the exercise was simply to get McAuslan within sight of the lamp, which with good luck and management and Wee Wullie clobbering the opposition, might just be possible. Refinements like stalking the lamp over the last couple of hundred yards could take their chance – it might be fun to try it, though, and with that in mind I arranged that my own map-reading partner should be Lance-Corporal Macrae: he had been a professional ghillie and stalker in peace-time, adept at getting American tycoons and fat maharajahs within blasting distance of stags. Given sufficient time and darkness he could lift an eagle chick from its mother without her noticing, and as we rumbled out in the closed truck that midnight I explained to him that if he could exercise his talents by extinguishing the lamp undetected, it would probably earn him a weekend pass from a gratified Colonel.
‘The rest of you,’ I told the close-packed mass of bodies in the darkened truck, ‘concentrate on getting within sight of the red light. If you get that far without being picked up by the Gunners, you’ll have scored. Okay? After that, you can have a go at stalking the lamp, but that’s just the icing on the cake. I don’t suppose there’ll be much chance of getting past the last guards near the bridge – it’s pretty bare country, but have a try. But the main thing is to get within sight of it, so when you’re dropped, in a few minutes’ time, get a good bearing on the North Star, and start using your maps . . .’
‘That’s it, Wullie,’ McAuslan’s voice sounded hoarsely out of the steaming press. ‘Gottae get a bearin’. See where north is. That’s whit jiggered Columbus; didnae ken whaur he wis gaun, see, ‘cos his compass wisnae p’intin’ —’
‘And remember,’ I said finally, ‘our password is ‘Din’, and the password of the Artillery company who’re trying to stop us is ‘Gin’. So if anyone challenges you with ‘Gin’, just get the hell out of it, quickly. If they get hold of you – use your own initiative.’
They gave happy growls in the dark, and McAuslan was heard to observe that he wid melt onybuddy that said ‘Gin’ tae him. At this point the truck halted, and I peered under the tarpaulin at the silent African night; just a thin moon, fortunately, but enough to show the silent dunes and scrub, empty and desolate.
‘First two out,’ I said, and two of the Jocks dropped over the tailboard. ‘I think we’re somewhere west of the Yarhuna Road. Good luck.’
We drove on, stopping every five minutes to drop another pair. Macrae and I were going to be last out, and I held Wee Wullie and McAuslan back as penultimate pair. Wee Wullie, who had cunningly been kept on fatigues that evening as long as decency allowed, to prevent him drinking the canteen dry in advance, had only had time for about eight pints before taps, so he was relatively sober and consequently morose. To McAuslan’s repeated inquires about whether he had the map, and the compass, and the matches, and could take a bearin’, ‘cos if we don’t we’ll be away for ile, he responded with irritable grunts; when the time came for him to drop, he went over the tailboard like a silent mammoth, swinging down one-handed from the overhead stanchion to land noiselessly in the sand, while McAuslan fell over me, muttering:
‘Sure ye got the matches, big yin? Ah cannae see a bluidy thing – whaur’s the tailboard, but? Och, ta, sur – there we are. Staun’ frae under, big yin, Ah’m gaunae jump!’
He took a shambling dive over the tailboard, and the sound of rending cloth and an appalling oath split the night. As the truck jerked forward and their two dim figures receded into the gloom it appeared that McAuslan, his denim trousers in rags about his ankles, was grovelling at Wee Wullie’s feet, complaining that his bluidy breeks wis tore; the trooser-erse, he lamented, wis oot o′ them. I didn’t hear any more, but with any luck McAuslan’s semi-nudity would delay their exploration of the wilderness in which they had been left, and Macrae and I would have a chance to double back and find them.
It wasn’t easy. The truck, on its last leg, doubled and turned bewilderingly — I wondered if MacKenzie had got at the driver – and Macrae and I were finally deposited on an utterly flat stretch of desert track with not a landmark in sight. A look at the stars confirmed that we were south-east of the Yarhuna Road bridge, and we ploughed confidently for home, but with no high hopes that our course would intersect that of the McAuslan-Wullie partnership, presumably labouring somewhere to westward.
We got our first definite fix after about twenty minutes, on a small Arab village called Qufra which I remembered from a route march. We were a good six miles from the Yarhuna Road bridge, but what was worse, Qufra had a Gunner patrol in it – we’ d probably have walked into them, but a dulcet Liverpool voice drifting over the sand warned us in time. I hadn’t expected them to be this far out; you don’t usually reckon on meeting opposition until you’re fairly close to home, where they can narrow the angle on you. We skirted the village, plodding through bad, shifting sand, and made another mile before we had to duck into a wadi to avoid more Gunners, camped out having a smoke near a palm grove.
It had been fairly placid thus far, and quite pleasant walking through the warm African night, admiring the moon shadows on the dunes, and pausing whenever a village or other landmark came in sight, to check our position on the map. But now the moon went down, leaving only the star-sheen, and ground black with shadows in visibility of about twenty yards. We went cautiously now, keeping apart, and presently received intimation that the exercise was warming up: sounds of tumult and combat came drifting out of the dark ahead, cries of ‘Din!’ and ‘Gin, you bastard!’, accompanied by a steady pounding which reminded me of balmy evenings on Chowringhee, Calcutta, when we used to take the air outside Jimmy’s Kitchen and the Nip Inn, listening to the rhythmic thumping from the bushes on the darkened Maidan, where the Cameronians and Royal Marines were relieving the American Air Force of their wallets.
The battle ahead gradually faded into the distance, and we scouted forward to a low wall skirting what seemed to be an ancient Moslem temple. I thought I remembered it from the map, but it would have been too risky to strike a match, so we crouched in silence, listening and waiting.
That was a mistake. It gave me time to think, and my imagination being what it is, the sight of that gaunt, eerie little ruin began to work on me. A slight wind had got up, rustling the weeds in the enclosure and sighing dolefully in the broken dome; it was suddenly chill and quiet, and the dark was closing in, bringing uncomfortable thoughts of deserted churchyards, with yawning graves, Black Masses, unholy conjurings, and satanic rites. It’s fearful what a mixture of Highland atavism a
nd Presbyterian upbringing can do at two in the morning; before I knew it I was muttering Forbidden Words like ‘Tripsaricopsem’, and wondering perversely if the formula for raising Auld Horny in a kirkyard would charm up Mahound in a Moslem cemetery. Let’s see, you mutter the Lord’s Prayer backwards, and presently the Devil appears round the church in the form of a toad . . . inevitably I found the words going through my brain: ‘Amen ever and ever for glory the . . .’
A sudden hideous keening wail sounded from behind the ruin, Macrae dived beneath the cover of the wall, my hair bristled up on my scalp, and I stared horrified as the Devil suddenly came surging round the corner of the temple. For a dreadful moment I thought I’d unleashed the Powers of Darkness just by thinking about them, and then I realised that if this truly was His Infernal Majesty, he wasn’t in the form of a toad; furthermore he was clad mostly in a pair of drawers, cellular, soldiers for the use of, and moving at a hell of a clip with three Artillerymen after him roaring ‘Gin!’ By way of answer he was crying ‘Mither o’ Goad!’, which seemed out of character, and something in the way he attempted to leap the wall and failed, bringing down a hail of rock on Macrae and me, provided a positive identification.
‘McAuslan!’ I shouted, and then the Gunners came pounding over the top, with cries of triumph, and the night got interesting. I rolled down a sandy slope, locked in the arms of one of them, with McAuslan clutching at my leg and apparently trying to bite it. We snarled ‘Din!’ and ‘Gin!’ and ‘Aw, jeez, they tore ma bluidy shirt aff, an’ me wi’ nae breeks!’ respectively, and I escaped possible gangrene only by shouting: ‘It’s me, McAuslan! Worry him, boy!’ We punched and wrestled blasphemously in the dark, McAuslan observing bitterly that he wis aboot sick o’ this, and whaur wis Wullie wi’ the bluidy compass, and then more Gunners came on the scene, and it would have gone hard with us if the night had not also produced Wee Wullie, in the nick of time. I had a Gunner sitting on my chest, demanding my name and number, and had just played my last desperate card, which was to threaten him with court-martial for assaulting a superior, when something like a rushing mighty wind swept away my oppressor, and presently Macrae and I were sitting on the temple wall, panting and licking our wounds, and listening to the appalling noise of our platoon giant dealing with about a dozen frantic Artillerymen, and evidently enjoying it.
We left him to it, and when we had found McAuslan crawling about on all fours in the gloom alternately snuffling piteously because he had lost a boot in the mêlée and mumbling to himself that the North Star pointed to Glasgow, we took stock. Our maps and compasses had gone, trodden into the field of battle where Wee Wullie could be distantly heard singing ‘One-Eyed Riley’ with a ring of his slain presumably around him.
‘He’s an awfy man, yon,’ said McAuslan in an awed whisper. ‘Like a wild beast, so he is. Cannae read a map for toffee, but — an’ Ah kept tellin’ ’m, Ah did. “Yer erse is oot the windy, big yin,” Ah sez, but he had a flask o’ rum in his pocket, an’ there wis nae pittin’ sense intae ’im, an’ – ’
‘Just as well,’ I said. ‘Now, listen, McAuslan. We haven’t far to go – a mile or so at most. All you have to do is keep quiet, and let Macrae and me find the way. Right? Quiet, you understand, and stick like a limpet or so help me I’ll brain you. If we strike trouble, leave it to us; I want you to get within sight of that red light, that’s all – never mind about stalking it or doing anything clever. Just stand up and yell for the nearest officer, see?’
‘Aw,’ he said, doubtfully, ‘but Ah thought – ’
‘Don’t think! You’re not paid to think! Just do as you’re told.’
‘Awright, sur. Awright. But Ah’m no wandered, me. Ah ken the password, Ah can see the North Star, right enough, an’ aw, see there, there’s ra Constipation o’ O’Brien again, jist like in ra Padre’s book, an’ – ’
‘Come on!’ I snapped, and we set off into the night, two desperate men and the amateur astronomer in his cellular drawers, ambling behind with his eyes glued to the North Star, blaspheming as he fell over things.
I was beginning to think we’d make it when we struck the Yarhuna Road, but some clever Gunner officer outguessed us; naturally we didn’t follow the road itself, but kept to the scrubby country a couple of hundred yards off on one side, and that’s where the crafty brute had planted his ambush. They came out of the ground like phantoms, chanting ‘Gin!’, and we could do nothing but scatter and run, McAuslan gallumphing unevenly away into the gloom in his one boot, clutching his underpants in desperation and crying that it was a bluidy liberty. He had a stalwart Gunner in close pursuit, and was plainly done for; in the meantime, Macrae was nabbed, and I only escaped by selling a dummy to an assailant who must have been a Rugby player, because he bought it by sheer instinct. I ran my hardest for about a quarter of a mile, lay up in a dry ditch until the pursuit had tailed away, and then stole ahead.
It was easier now; apart from being on my own, I found I was moving into populated country, with people blundering through the night in all directions, occasionally muttering ′Din′ and ‘Gin’ hopefully. It took just a little time and patience to get me to the top of a dune where I could look down on the road bridge, with its guttering red lamp. There were a few sentries staked out at a sporting distance from the bridge, and off to one side what looked like a group of umpires with a flashlight, and beyond them a couple of three-ton trucks with troops round them – captured map-readers who had surrendered their identity discs and been brought in. Another truck was coming down the road, headlights on, to pull up beside the first two and disgorge its disgruntled cargo. McAuslan, I reflected, would probably be among them.
However, so far as I could judge, fewer than half the company had been caught; the night must be full of skulkers like me, some of them lurking as I was within sight of the lamp. There wasn’t much cover, but there were tongues of shadow right up to the bridge itself; if one could just take time, and crawl the furlong or so undetected . . . I cursed the luck that had put Macrae into the bag; if anyone could have got there, he could. Still, I could have a go; there was no disgrace in failing at this stage.
It took me about an hour, quite enjoyable in its way, to work my way down to within a stone’s throw of the lamp. It was flat-on-your-belly stuff, an inch at a time, listening to the darkness, and twice some mysterious radar stopped me just in time while a shadow ahead resolved itself into a prone Gunner, waiting motionless for unwary stalkers. Each time I had to retreat painfully slowly and take a new tack, with my clothes full of itching sand and my stomach feeling as though it had been through a bramble bush. Then I struck what looked like a good line along a fold of dead ground, worming forward until I was close in to the bridge, snug in a patch of inky shadow, with the lamp not twenty yards ahead, just asking for it. Talk about your Chingachgook, thinks I, and was bracing myself to dive the last few yards when a voice out of the night offered me a cigarette. It was a Gunner captain, sitting still as a post within a yard of me; he had been watching my progress, he said, for several minutes.
‘I’d have challenged, but you seemed to be having such fun. Gin, by the way.’
‘Din,’ I said, rolling over on my back and accepting his cigarette, ‘you rotten sadist. MacNeill, Lieutenant, D Company, and you’re not getting my I.D. discs, either; I got within sight of your kindly light.’
‘Most of your chaps did, but everyone who tried to stalk the lamp has been nailed. Bound to be,’ he went on smugly. ‘I think we’ve got it pretty well sewn up. In fact, I’d say it’s about time we called it a night, wouldn’t you? Getting on for dawn, and I’m damned cold – can’t see any of your latecomers doing any better . . . hullo, who’s that?’
He was looking towards the bridge; in the dim glow of the red lamp a figure could be faintly seen, shambling uncertainly and pawing in a disoriented manner, like a baboon with a hangover. I stared with a wild surmise – I knew that Lon Chaney silhouette, even to the draggling outline of its cellular drawers . . .
′Hey, you!′ cried the Gunner Captain, and the figure started, lurched, and stumbled; there was a clatter and a mouth-filling guttural oath – and the lamp was out, plunging the bridge into blackness. There were yells of astonishment, someone blew a whistle, the Gunner Captain swore horribly and started shouting for his sergeant, people ran around in the dark, and for about two minutes chaos reigned. Personally I just lay there and smoked, waiting for enlightenment.
It came when someone brought a torch and they focused it on the figure which lay snuffling and swearing beside the wreckage of the lamp, bewailing the fact that he had got ile a’ ower his drawers, an’ them his only clean pair. He sat blinking and aggrieved in the spotlight while the Gunners regarded him with dismay, demanding to know who he was and where he had come from.
‘Good Lord!′ said one, ‘he’s still got his tags on!’ And sure enough, he still had his identity discs round his unwashed neck. Which meant he hadn’t been picked up by the defenders – somehow he had avoided capture, and here he was in undisputed possession of the lamp which he had undoubtedly extinguished, glaring in baleful distress at his inquisitors and wiping his nose fretfully.
‘Who the hell are you?’ demanded the Gunner Captain in wrath. ‘And why the hell are you half-naked?’
I realised there were unplumbed mysteries here, and they must be played for all they were worth.
‘He’s McAuslan. One of my Jocks,’ I said, with just a hint of complacency. ‘Yes, as I hoped, he’s bagged the lamp. He’s pretty good at this sort of thing, of course.’ Good might not be the appropriate word, but it would do. ‘Well done, McAuslan. Yes, you see, he likes to wear as little as possible when he’s stalking; in fact he usually does it entirely stark. He’s – ’