by Max Hennessy
‘Injuries largely on me head,’ Wood-Withnell growled. ‘Nothing wrong with me bum.’
Boumphrey produced robes and keffiyehs. ‘Better put these on,’ he said. ‘Then you’ll look like my people. They won’t attack us. And the horses won’t bolt. They’re lame.’
The robes and keffiyehs were slipped on, then Boumphrey helped them into bandoleers of ammunition. Calmly and with no sign of panic, Prudence pushed her father into the saddle and made him comfortable, then she turned to Boumphrey with shining eyes. ‘How super, Ratter,’ she said. ‘You’ve thought of everything.’
* * *
It didn’t turn out quite as Boumphrey had expected. By the time they had gone a quarter of a mile down the road towards the city, the colonel and Prudence lost in the centre of the Belles, an Irazhi ran out and stopped them.
As the little column halted, a car appeared from around the back of the Irazhi’s house. It had obviously been hidden under hay because wisps of it were still jammed between the bonnet and the front mudguard. A white man was at the wheel and the rest of the car was packed with his family and luggage.
‘We heard from Doctor Amad that you were going to the embassy,’ he said. ‘Can we join you?’
The car was fitted into the column and they set off again. A mile further on another car joined them, then a family on foot carrying what possessions they could. By the time they reached the city outskirts, they had acquired five more families and by the time they halted outside the embassy another three, all of them exhausted, frightened and in need of help. They were spotted some time before the embassy came in sight and two of Jenno’s cars under Flight Sergeant Madoc roared towards them, circling behind them and taking up positions at either end of the column, their machine guns a threat against any attempt to interfere. His eyes alert, his face set and strained, Boumphrey raised a hand to Madoc but didn’t halt the column. When they reached the embassy, the gates opened and they all swept inside the wide courtyard.
As Boumphrey climbed from the saddle, he found himself facing Prudence. Her eyes shining, she flung her arms round him, and hugged him.
‘Oh, Ratter,’ she said. ‘You were quite splendid!’
‘Steady on, old thing,’ he said. ‘Can’t go off like that.’ The ambassador appeared on the steps to greet them. Behind him were Johns and a few white men, and every window seemed to be packed with faces of women and children.
‘I’m delighted you found them, Boumphrey,’ the ambassador said. ‘I was worried about you but it seems to have been worth it. I’ve been given permission by the Irazhi govemment for all the women and children to leave. I’ve also been in touch with the air vice-marshal and he’s arranging to fly them to the coast. The first batch will leave for Kubaiyah as soon as possible tomorrow.’
‘Well,’ Boumphrey said, ‘that appears to be the end of that.’
‘Is it?’ Jenno said cynically. ‘I’d say this was just the beginning.’
10
‘Due to unforeseen circumstances,’ the ambassador said, ‘the crisis we feared seems to have arrived rather sooner than expected.’
The conference was being held while the new arrivals were being found places in the billiard room and settled in. In the ambassador’s office were Johns, Jenno and Boumphrey, together with the ambassador’s aides.
‘I’m in constant touch by wireless with Kubaiyah,’ the ambassador went on. ‘But the situation’s worsening hourly. Ghaffer’s agreed not to interfere with the evacuation of the women and children but I’ve heard from Flying Officer Osanna that Irazhi troops are being assembled to the north of the city and it seems clear that, after the evacuation of women and children, they intend to stop all movement to or from the airfield.’
‘Who’s behind it?’ Johns asked.
‘The Italians,’ the ambassador said bluntly. ‘And doubtless the Germans. The army in Greece is in trouble and will doubtless eventually have to be evacuated to Crete, where inevitably there’ll be another attack because it’s another stepping stone to the Middle East. I don’t think this coup was engineered on Axis instructions, but I think Ghaffer’s confident of Axis support. Rommel’s advanced to the border of Egypt and I expect Ghaffer feels a decisive stage of the war’s been reached and that his coup’s come at exactly the right moment. They expect Axis forces to arrive very soon and that the decisive battle of the Middle East will be fought here. They will naturally expect a reward.’
‘Can they get away with it?’ Jenno asked.
The ambassador pulled a face. ‘We know that Mussolini’s now totally dependent on Germany but we think Hitler regards this area merely as a sideshow. However, though direct intervention by the Luftwaffe is out of the question at the moment because we’re out of range, it’s possible to fly arms in, in individual aircraft, providing they stop to refuel in Syria.’
‘Won’t that require clearance by the Syrian authorities?’
‘Syria is Vichy-controlled,’ the ambassador said gently. ‘And Vichy is controlled by Hitler.’
There was silence for a while then the ambassador spoke again. ‘Without doubt, the Axis will endeavour to get aircraft here to neutralize Kubaiyah. Which is why I’m anxious to have all the women and children away as soon as possible. We now have around three hundred and fifty people here, and the United States ambassador has another one hundred and fifty. The children must go first. The men will remain until the end, especially the fit, in case this place needs defending.’
‘Will it?’ Johns asked.
‘Embassies have not been sacred cows for a long time.’ The ambassador gave a wry smile but he seemed quite calm. ‘However, I suspect that any fighting that takes place will be at Kubaiyah because if Kubaiyah were to surrender, Ghaffer would have all its aircraft, all its fitments and workshops and a good landing ground where the Germans could fly in from Syria. I’ve therefore decided to send most of the British doctors and nurses there and keep here only sufficient to look after ourselves and any refugees who might turn up.’
* * *
The gates of the embassy were opened early the following morning and Boumphrey’s Belles, whose horses had been quartered in the embassy gardens during the night, clattered out and took up positions in the road.
A few Irazhis appeared to watch the proceedings, and there were a few jeers and a little half-hearted stone-throwing, but it soon stopped. The women and children began to climb into the back of the lorries. Including Wood-Withnell, there were three doctors spread through the convoy. There were also seven British nurses and the remaining lorries included among their passengers those women with a knowledge of first aid – among them Prudence Wood-Withnell, who had lied like a trooper to be included.
‘Father says he doesn’t intend to be trapped in the embassy,’ she explained to Boumphrey. ‘I think he smells battle.’
As the ambassador took up a position on the steps, Christine Craddock was talking to Jenno.
‘Why can’t I come in one of your cars?’ she was asking in a low voice.
‘Because if there’s trouble,’ Jenno said, ‘I’d just have to dump you on the pavement and get on with the job. I can’t fight off a mob with you aboard.’
She glanced up at the people in the lorry waiting patiently for her to make up her mind. ‘Well, I’m not going to ride with that lot,’ she said. ‘Half of them are tradesmen. They’re not my type. I’ll stay at the embassy. It’ll be safer and a lot more comfortable.’
The convoy left the city in silence, led by the armoured cars, with Boumphrey’s horsemen trotting in single file on either side. There was a distinct sense of unrest as they headed through streets heavy with resentment and teeming with gesticulating people.
They began to meet Irazhi troops as soon as they left the city, and as they approached the iron bridge at Shawah the convoy had to halt because of Irazhi vehicles filling the road. Soldiers in mustard-coloured khaki waited by the roadside, loaded down with equipment and weapons. Nearby, mule-hauled carts piled high with equipmen
t had become entangled with a span of oxen hauling a gun.
As the convoy halted, Boumphrey moved ahead to stop alongside Jenno’s car. ‘Something’s up,’ he said. ‘Where are they off to?’
‘They say they’re on manoeuvres,’ Jenno explained. ‘I expect that’s a euphemism for taking up positions in case hostilities commence. It can’t be that idiot, Craddock, holed up at Hatbah with the Engineers. Two men and a boy on a donkey could handle that.’
The wait to cross the bridge was a long one and as the people in the lorries, stifling in the heat, began to feel distressed, an elderly man collapsed. Jenno approached the officer in command of the bridge and started a long argument, but the officer insisted that Irazhi troops must be allowed to cross before the refugees. No matter how Jenno argued about the women and children, he refused to be moved and they had to wait for two hours as the gun and the mule carts were sorted out and the movement began again.
Waiting in the baking heat, listening to the rumble of wheels and the thump of feet crossing the bridge, Jenno was aware of hostility in the watching black eyes. There were a few shouts of ‘Britons go home’ as the Irazhi troops tramped past the halted vehicles but, despite the resentment, no hostile move was made.
Eventually, the road cleared and, aware that more troops were coming up behind, Jenno quickly moved the armoured cars into the gap, and waved the lorries on, nose-to-tail so that none of the Irazhi units could be interposed.
‘Close up,’ he kept shouting. ‘Close up! Don’t open out, for God’s sake, or we’ll be split up!’
Every now and again a gap opened because of some squad of marching men moving between the lorries. It happened so often it was clear it was deliberate. Then Boumphrey hit on the idea of hindering the movement of the marching men before they could hinder the movement of the lorries. Keeping his horsemen ready, he moved them up the minute he saw a gap opening and the jostling ponies effectively prevented the infantry from halting the lorries by getting between them.
Across the bridge at last, they began to speed along the narrow strip of black asphalt shimmering in the sun. By this time the heat was fiery and the asphalt was beginning to bubble. As they left the canal behind, however, they ran into another jam and had to halt again. Children began to cry and distraught mothers attempted to shield them from the sun. The nurses were fully occupied and Boumphrey saw Prudence Wood-Withnell and a doctor attending a figure in one of the lorries.
An Irazhi lorry ahead had broken down and, as with all military columns, vehicles had piled up behind it, so close to each other it was impossible to move them in any direction. Angry officers were shouting at each other, and vehicles at the tail of the column were trying to reverse. As soon as the jam was cleared, Jenno pushed in, stationing his cars and Boumphrey’s horsemen along the sides of the road so that their convoy couldn’t be interrupted.
Eventually they came to Fullajah, a little town of mud brick houses. It had been an intemational halting place in the days of Xenophon and Alexander the Great but, despite the trans-desert highway that ran through it from Palestine, its streets were narrow, its houses of yellowish brick and corrugated iron. It was a shoddy, ugly place, and round it the land was as flat as a plate, stretching away for ever, it seemed, vast, desolate, pallid, the pale bulrush stubble of the river standing in water that reflected the vast blue sky.
Palms fringed the river bank and on the surface of the water were all sorts of craft – Arab trading boats rigged for full sail, primitive bitumen canoes from the marshes upstream, launches, steamers, even circular rafts of reed matting. In the shallows, water buffaloes moved, slow, shaggy and enduring, voicing their protests not with a moo but with a groan that seemed to come straight from the heart. Standing on the raised bund that held the river in check, the villagers watched them pass, robes and headcloths flapping in the wind, among them young girls with eyes like gazelles. The place was full of troops and once again they were held down to a crawl. The Irazhi officer in command was making things as difficult as possible, and it was now approaching midday with the sun at its hottest and the wind rising to scatter the dust.
There was an ominous number of guns about the streets – 4.5 field guns, 3.7 howitzers, two anti-tank guns, Bren guns and machine guns of other types; armoured cars, a light tank and several gun-towing lorries. The Irazhi soldiers stood along the roadside, their faces expressionless and impassive, their unshaven faces dark with hostility.
Kubaiyah came in sight at last and the view of the hangars gave way to leafy avenues and the red roofs of bungalows. Aircraft were dispersed about the landing area, the air above them shimmering as the sun struck their metal parts. The convoy drove in between pink flowering oleanders. At the entrance to headquarters a sentry of the Assyrian levies saluted Jenno. The air vice-marshal had arrived from Air Headquarters to welcome the women and children and with him were Group Captain Vizard, Chief Flying Instructor Fogarty, and a few other officers. The lorries drew to a stop with their occupants bravely singing ‘Rule Britannia’ and, as they halted, one of the women shouted for three cheers in a high-pitched voice.
The air vice-marshal called for silence and announced that a meal would be served within half an hour and that quarters had been prepared.
‘We’re going to fly you out to Basra just as soon as possible,’ he said. ‘You’ll find it cooler there. The troop carriers are being prepared now.’
Jenno edged towards Boumphrey. ‘There’s what looks like a new flight of Gladiators,’ he murmured. ‘It must have arrived while we’ve been away. And I also thought I saw a new Blenheim.’
They learned what had happened when the air vice-marshal called a conference later in the day.
‘We’ve received one Blenheim and five Gladiators from the Middle East,’ he pointed out. ‘However, I’m under no delusions but that they were sent here because they’re considered to be of little use there, so you can draw your own conclusions about their value. And, with things developing as they are there, I think we can expect little likelihood of any more.’
He made no bones about the deepening seriousness of the crisis. ‘Still,’ he went on, ‘another squadron of Wellingtons is being flown to Shaibah and, if necessary, we can use them as reinforcements here. The Dakotas bringing in troops and supplies will be used to fly out more women and children. When the Valentias return, they’ll be bringing arms, ammunition and food supplies. They’ll also be bringing in four hundred men of the Loyals who’ve arrived at Basra from Karachi. With the six companies of the Assyrians and our own people, that gives us around two thousand men for the defence – if it comes to a defence – of a perimeter of nearly eight miles. Unfortunately, we also have, plus the civilians who have just arrived, the families of the levies, the station bearers, Indian laundry hands, labourers and other workers, so that the total of people inside the perimeter is around nine thousand. I don’t have to tell you that number is far too many if we’re to be besieged.’
The AVM paused. ‘However,’ he continued, ‘on the credit side we have eighteen elderly but still robust armoured cars, the Irazhi Mounted Legion, and a force of all arms is now assembling in Palestine under Brigadier Lindley to come to our relief. But they’re separated from us by four hundred miles of desert and a lot of flooding and we’re not over-supplied with weapons.’
The station armament officer spoke. ‘We have two 4.5 howitzers, sir.’
The AVM looked as if he didn’t believe him and the armament officer explained with a grin. ‘The ones used as ornaments on the lawn outside, sir,’ he pointed out.
The AVM’s eyebrows rose. The two old guns, which had last seen service in the first war, had stood outside Air Headquarters so long no one noticed them any longer. ‘Will they work?’ he asked.
‘I’ve examined them, sir,’ the armament officer said. ‘And they appear to be in good order. Fortunately, the climate here precludes rusting or deterioration of that sort and I’ve learned that the breechblocks have been discovered in the stores of t
he Aircraft Depot. They should be a help.’
11
Not for one day had the flying training ceased. Every morning the field emptied of aeroplanes until five minutes to midday when it was filled with returning machines, each trying to get in first so that the pupil pilots would be at the head of the queue for lunch. After lunch they all took off again and the aerodrome was quiet once more until the stroke of four when they all arrived back, like pupils summoned to their classroom by the pealing of the school bell.
The Valentias of the Communications Flight, enormous ugly biplanes, were wheeled forward late in the aftemoon, and the whole aerodrome turned out to see them leave.
The first batch of women and children were hurried to the airfield. They were a pathetic-looking lot, wearing everything they could because they were allowed only what they could carry. Despite the growing heat, some of the women wore two coats and children were complaining about the weight of two sweaters. They were all borne down with suitcases and packages and they all looked tired, unwashed and exhausted.
As the Valentias took off, the AVM gave a sigh of relief. As he turned away he glanced at the ridge of high ground overlooking the aerodrome and his eye caught a flash of light. He knew exactly what it meant. Irazhi soldiers were up there.
That evening there was another of the interminable conferences. By this time there wasn’t a man at Kubaiyah who wasn’t expecting the Irazhis to attack and only Osanna had much to say that was encouraging.
‘We understand,’ he pointed out, ‘that Hitler believes – erroneously – that there are 14,000 British troops in Irazh and another 14,000 on the way.’
‘I wish there were,’ the AVM said.
‘Besides,’ Osanna continued, ‘we know that now the fighting in Greece is reaching its climax Hitler’s occupied with the invasion of Crete. It’s obvious that will come next because the German airborne general, Student, is in Athens. For us, if not for the men in Crete, that’s an advantage. Thank God it doesn’t seem to have occurred to Hitler that he could use his aircraft here to greater effect.’
