Killing Rommel

  “That’s the least of our worries,” says Punch. He means petrol. We’re fifteen miles out from South Cairn with ninety minutes of light remaining. “Let’s get what we came for.”

  We press on cautiously to the five-mile mark. Where’s the dump? Punch has been here before and so has Grainger. I put them both up front in the cabs, standing. We prowl forward at a four-hundred-yard spread.

  Terrain has changed again, into a washboard of gullies and dry ravines, with numerous tyre tracks converging like motorways. A ridge of low dunes runs north and south, looking like the Cornish coast. Have we overshot? At twenty minutes Grainger sings out, indicating a hummock several hundred yards on the right.

  I have both trucks take up posts, hull-down behind ridges, north of the site. I can’t send Grainger forward; he’s too valuable as wireless operator. Punch and Durrance go in on foot. We kill both engines so we can hear.

  A wind comes up at sunset in the desert, as the air cools above the still-searing sand. If the tracks we saw earlier are fresh, the armoured cars that made them could be nosing round anywhere.

  I can see Punch and Durrance scanning for the dump marker; they spot something, then slip from sight behind a dune. When they re-emerge, Punch holds both arms out, palms up, as if to say we’re buggered.

  He comes back.

  “Some bleeders have beat us to it.”

  We go in while there’s still daylight. The dump is an “L” of slit trenches carved in the rocky ground and covered with sand and stones. About sixty jerry cans and the same number of flimsies sit neatly in rows. Durrance treads above them, banging each with a stick as he passes. Hollow, hollow, hollow. “Only fifteen with petrol.”

  A fast calculation says we’ve got just enough to get back. If it weren’t for the two jerry cans Nick Wilder gave us, we couldn’t make it at all.

  “The bastards could have at least shown manners and left a note,” says Grainger. “We’ve got supper anyway.” And he holds up six jars of Palestinian honey he has found. We stock the dump with our diesel; the fuel may save someone’s life someday, even the enemy’s. “Whoever took the petrol,” says Wannamaker, “could still be about.”

  We look at each other.

  “Top up the tanks,” I say. “Let’s get moving.”

  The desert gets very dark before moonrise. That suits us fine. We’re all spooked by the tracks and the looted dump. It makes no difference if the culprits are Germans, Italians or our own Tommies or Kiwis; in the dark, they’ll all take a crack at us.

  We skim north along a different track from the one we came in on. Twice tyres on Wannamaker’s truck blow, caused by that bad front wobble. Finally when the moon rises we halt and hammer the steering-rod back into shape. The racket must carry twenty miles. We chug on. The night crackles frostily under starlight bright enough to drive by; we’re wrapped up in balaclavas, scarves, and greatcoats with thick shirts and pullovers underneath. At 2200 we camp. No fires. Cold rations. We’ve been driving fourteen hours. A double tot of rum fortifies us mightily. We rig the aerial and try to raise Jake. Too late. He’ll be tuned to London and the Overseas Service. Ten in Libya is nine at home. We lock on to the BBC too. Alvar Lidell’s baritone squawks from Grainger’s earphones, set up like tiny speakers at the edge of the drop shelf that makes his writing surface. Standage and Grainger shoot the stars with the theodolite. I ask Standage how close he can come to fixing our position exactly.

  “Do you play golf?”

  “A little.”

  “Within a niblick.” And he grins.

  There’s no danger of air attack so the trucks squat side by side, with all guns under their canvas wraps. We spread groundsheets, scooping out hip-holes, and lay our bedrolls on the stony serir.

  Suddenly in the distance: an engine.

  All hands spring to the guns. Covers are torn free, safeties clicked off, cocking levers pulled. I can hear Punch’s breath whistling in his nose.

  The engine sound recedes.

  Silence.

  “Bloody hell,” says Durrance.

  We stand down. Two minutes later: engine noise again. All hands leap back to alert.

  Again a phantom.

  “Blast this place! What the hell’s going on?”

  Durrance and Standage grab Tommy guns and trot out from the trucks, straining their ears into the distance. The rest of us stand by the Vickers and the two Brownings, listening like dogs.

  “There,” says Punch.

  He pads to the tailboard of our truck.

  “It’s the flippin’ rum jar.”

  We cluster round.

  The wind blowing across the mouth of the ceramic jar makes a sound exactly like a truck engine.

  I whistle Durrance and Standage back. We’re all twice as nervy now. We settle but can’t sleep. It’s no good, sitting here working ourselves into a state. The track north is flat; no wadis or unseen drop-offs to plunge into. “Pack up,” I say. “Let’s put some more miles under our belt.”

  We run, lights out, navigating by the Pole Star. Who cares how tired we are? If armoured cars catch us in daylight, they’ll make mincemeat of us. I lead, with Wannamaker a hundred yards behind and to the side so we don’t smash into each other if one of us drifts off. Every twenty minutes we switch leaders. The trucks make five miles, ten. Then we start seeing lights.

  Headlights? Stars?

  “See ’em?”

  We all do. Except none of us trusts his imagination anymore. The lights roll steadily northwards, to our west, paralleling our route. This makes no sense. An enemy stalking us would run lights-out. The sight must be a phantom. I pull alongside Wannamaker at ten mph. We’re both peering through binos. The lights look about two thousand yards out. Just within machine-gun range.

  “Speed up,” I say.

  The lights stay with us.

  We slow down. The lights don’t go away.

  Now: a second set. Farther out but also running parallel.

  “Sod these buggers,” says Punch. “Let’s have a run at ’em.”

  I veto this. The lights may not even be real. They could be an atmospheric anomaly. The way they mirror our movements makes me think so.

  “They’re getting closer,” says Standage.

  “Everyone,” I say, “keep your wits about you.”

  I order both trucks to turn to the flank, drive ninety degrees away from the lights. Will they follow? All eyes strain over the tailboard. Then:

  “Where’s Wannamaker?”

  We’ve lost the wireless truck!

  I brake and switch off. We listen. A truck in the cold doesn’t go silent at once; our suspension and undercarriage groan and squeal. “I can’t hear a bleedin’ thing,” says Punch.

  A shape.

  Engine sound.

  Punch snicks his safety off.

  It’s Wannamaker.

  “Damn you lot!” Durrance hisses from their truck. “We almost blasted you.”

  Curses stream from both vehicles.

  “Shut up, everyone!” I’m furious. I unload a stream of profanity at both crews, including Wannamaker. The men stare. I’m not even technically their commander; I have no right to blister them like this. But all hands seem to respond positively to my tirade. I know it helps me. When I finish, my nerves are steady and my mind clear.

  What concerns me most about the phantom lights is the possibility that they may be our own fellows’. Another patrol on a different mission.

  To engage an unknown force in the dark is madness. But we can’t keep on like this; we’ll drive ourselves batty.

  We turn north again. The lights keep tracking us. It’s too much.

  “All right,” I say. “Let’s bust ’em.”

  I position our trucks flank-on to the lights, with fifty yards’ interval between. We’ll close on an angle till we’re fifteen hundred yards out, then open up with the Vickers and both Brownings. The guns have tracers every fifth round. On my command, open fire; on my command, cease.

  “Ligh
t ’em up.”

  The instant the guns fire, everything changes. The alteration in the men’s spirits is immediate and miraculous. The great ripping din of the muzzle blast; the smoking barrels; belts burning through the receivers on the Brownings; the Vickers’ drums screaming round; tracers arching in great two-thousand-yard parabolas; the pinging of the spent cartridge cases as they eject on to the truck-beds, and the satisfying way the vehicles rock from the recoil of the gun mounts. All irresolution is dispelled by taking the initiative. “Cease fire!”

  Are the enemy shooting back? In the blinding dazzle of our own muzzle flash, we haven’t seen a thing. Is anyone even out there?

  The lights have vanished. None of our fellows is hit.

  Punch’s Browning looses one final burst for good measure. “Let’s see if we got ’em!”

  Absolutely not.

  I order the trucks north. We push all night, navigating by the stars and the outlier dunes of the Sand Sea on our right. Several times I think I smell spilt petrol but I put it down to imagination, like the spectral lights. Two hours after sunrise, when at last we link with Jake’s No. 3 and No. 5 trucks in charge of Sergeant Thoroughgood, which have waited for us at Landing Ground 210 in the notch between the Egyptian and the Kalansho Sand Seas, I inspect the jerry cans of fuel in the truckbed behind the commander’s seat. Two neat bullet holes have been punched in the upper rims of each.

  15

  SERGEANT THOROUGHGOOD commands the two trucks left behind to take us on. To my immense relief, he’s got petrol for us, from another of Jake’s trucks which has broken down and had to be abandoned. Jake has stripped the vehicle of guns, ammunition and fuel and left it under cover, in case it can be salvaged later.

  Thoroughgood puts us in the picture as to T1 and R1. Both patrols have crossed the neck between the sand seas and are now two hundred miles north. Thoroughgood will lead us to rendezvous with them.

  “Any chance of getting our heads down?” asks Punch. We’re all exhausted.

  Thoroughgood says no; Jake’s orders are to take us north the moment we appear; we are to establish a base for the other patrols, who will be conducting raids on Axis supply routes. “Oh,” says the sergeant, “I almost forgot. Signal last night from HQ: Rommel’s been evacuated to Germany. The mission’s off.”

  We stare. Is this a joke?

  “The bugger’s ill, flown over to hospital. How’s that for a twist of the winkle?” The news, Thoroughgood tells us, is more than a week old. “Intelligence learnt it from the BBC. Brilliant work, eh?”

  I can’t tell whether I’m relieved or disappointed. I’m too tired to think. While the men get a brew on and top up the fuel tanks, Thoroughgood takes me through a swift map briefing. Instead of progressing north beyond the range of patrols out of the Axis-occupied oases of Jarabub and Siwa, then turning east to get directly into Rommel’s rear as had been the original plan, we have been redirected north and west towards Sidi Omar and Sidi Aziz. Jake, Nick and Major Mayne have already established a base camp halfway there at a place called Hatiet el Etla. From that site they will push north and begin ambushing German and Italian convoys on the Trigh el Abd and Trigh Capuzzo. I gulp a mug of hot sweet tea and climb back on the truck. We’re off!

  It takes two days to cross the sand seas to Garet Chod, about sixty miles west of Jarabub. The new moon is approaching; we’re six days into October. Thoroughgood guides us across the Garbada track, a desolate stone-bounded trace following the upper rim of the sand seas, then north across hard flat serir towards the RV. Signals from Cairo update the news on Rommel. Apparently the Field Marshal’s medical staff has ordered him evacuated to a hospital in Semmering, near Vienna. Jaundice, with intestinal complications. General Georg Stumme, whom none of us has heard of, now commands Panzerarmee Afrika.

  Three more hard days carry us across a band of salt marshes, called balats. The trucks are breaking down with dispiriting regularity. They’re worn out and so are we. By the fifth noon, we’re back gratefully among sandy, undulating duneland. That night we reach Hatiet el Etla. Jake isn’t there. Neither is Nick Wilder. Both patrols have gone north on raids. So have Major Mayne and the SAS. The only trucks are Collier’s two and one of Jake’s under repair. Collie’s waiting for us; he comes forward with a broad grin. The intensity of emotion, on his part and mine, takes me aback. I barely know the man; we’ve only served together a few days—but now we clasp hands like brothers. The inner desert truly is like the sea. When you make port, the weight of the world falls from your shoulders.

  Collie has hot coffee for us, and boxes of biscotti scrounged from the hulks of Italian trucks nearby. “Heard about the operation being scratched?” Collie tells us that another LRDG patrol, Spicer’s Y1, has been sent from Kufra with fuel, ammunition and spare parts for us. We’re to wait for it and for orders, “Hell’s bells,” Collie says, eyeing Punch, Standage and Grainger, “you buggers look like you just crawled out of the sausage machine.”

  Spicer’s patrol appears four days later. My diary reports us passing the next six repairing vehicles and serving as a rear base for the other patrols’ operations. Hatiet el Etla is nothing grander than a colony of sand mounds and wadis, but, judging by the welter of camel and tyre tracks round about, it’s a regular caravanserai for roving Tommies and Arabs. We have to move for safety, then move again after that. Too many tribesmen nosing about. “They’re friendly,” observes Collie, “but you never know.”

  The full moon is now two days away. It takes no genius to reckon that Monty will launch his all-out attack that night. The only question is will the Jerries strike first?

  On the night of 23 October, a signal from Jake sends us hurrying north to a site called Bir Golan in the desert south of the Trigh el Abd and west of the Sidi Omar–Fort Maddalena track. By the time we find it, just before dawn, the BBC is reporting the commencement of the mightiest artillery barrage of the war so far. The final battle of El Alamein has begun.

  Jake’s and Nick’s patrols are waiting at Bir Golan. They eagerly off-load the petrol and ammunition we’ve brought from Spicer. I ask Jake if he and Nick have been waiting only for us.

  “No,” says our commander. “For the infiltration teams.”

  Three teams of SAS commandos, with Major Mayne in charge, have set off two nights ago to raid the Afrika Korps supply depot at Sidi Suleiman. They haven’t come back. That’s the hold-up. Jake has sent a wireless truck forward each night to recall them, but they must have advanced beyond the range of their “A” radios.

  “Could they have been captured?” I ask.

  “That or dead,” says Jake.

  Nick asks Jake how long he’ll wait for the SAS teams.

  “Tonight’s it,” Jake answers. “We’ll leave two trucks for one more day, but the rest of us have got to get on.”

  The night passes. Nothing from the infiltration teams.

  Jake lingers till noon.

  At 1300 a weak signal comes. Jake recalls the teams. They acknowledge. But now they can’t find us. Another night passes. All three wireless trucks are sent forward seeking contact.

  Again nothing.

  Twice we move camp. Storches and ME-110s are over all the time now. We’re seeing Italian Macchi fighters and Savoia-Marchetti bombers. Once, a patrol of Italian scout cars passes within fifteen hundred yards. I have stopped keeping a diary, in case we’re captured. No point in giving the enemy any more info than they’ve already got. The hours drag. Weather has turned cold and rotten. We take cover under the trucks, not to get out of the sun but the rain. I haven’t bathed since Faiyoum or moved my bowels since the Sand Sea. Desert sores plague all of us, caused by nicks and scratches filling with oil, grit, sand and grease. They become infected and must be bandaged. They hurt like hell.

  Night descends. We’re freezing. At ten those still awake gather, bundled in our greatcoats, to hear the BBC news. At Stalingrad the Russians are holding strong. Then this:

  From North Africa comes an unconfirmed report tha
t Nazi ground commander Georg Stumme has been killed in an artillery barrage. Stumme is the general who replaced Field Marshal Rommel less than ten days ago. Rommel has been evacuated to Austria to undergo medical treatment.

  At 0400 Collie shakes me awake. When we get to Jake’s truck, Major Mayne and two of the SAS teams have returned. Nick and Sergeants Kehoe and Wannamaker hurry in sleepily from their trucks. Jake holds a lined notepad sheet, the kind upon which wireless signals from Cairo headquarters are written down and decoded. He reads:

  “Stumme dead. Rommel returns. Carry on operation.”

  The group stares, still groggy from the sudden wake-up. Jake passes the page to Mayne, who scans it and hands it to Wilder.

  “What does this mean, Jake?”

  “It means Rommel’s flying back to North Africa. Resuming command.”

  Jake takes the note sheet.

  “It means we’re back in business.”

  Book Four

  The Desert Fox

  16

  THE OPERATION returns to its original plan: strike east, penetrating from the rear the German and Italian formations west of Alamein.

  One day’s travel, cut short by a sandstorm, takes us to Bir al Khamsa south of Sofafi; a day in place for repairs, then two nights over good going (daytime is too dangerous now; the skies are solid with Axis fighters and bombers) carry the patrols to Bir El Ensor, forty miles south of Fuka, marked on LRDG maps as “Sore Thumb” for its jutting limestone outcrop. Here Jake establishes a base with two trucks from his own R1 patrol, including the medical vehicle with Captain Lawson and one wireless truck that has stripped second and third gears and must be repaired anyway. The heavyweight clashes at Alamein lie forty miles east along the thirty-mile front between the Qattara Depression and the sea. With nightfall, we can see the big guns flashing along the horizon. Jake passes the word for all patrol commanders and NCOs to assemble.

  For the first time, I am called forward and asked to contribute. Our assault parties, Jake says, will move up this night into their advance positions; they will be penetrating Axis formations within forty-eight hours. “Give us an idea of the types of security formations we’re likely to run into, and your best surmise as to where Rommel will be and what he’ll do.”