by Max Hennessy
Caccia gave a sudden grin. ‘Well, you can’t have it all ways,’ he said. ‘If they catch you like that, all done up like rabbit stew, they’ll stick you in front of a firing squad instead and shoot you as a spy.’
Morton’s jaw dropped and he wrenched off the German jacket and cap he was wearing and tossed them into the back of the lorry. As he turned, visibly shaken, the others also started wrenching at their headgear until they all stood bareheaded in shirts and shorts, staring at each other and wondering what to do.
‘Why don’t we,’ Morton said after a moment or two, ‘stick the lorry among those ruined sheds and wait until dark?’
‘We’ll never get away with it,’ Jones wailed. ‘They’ll spot us at once, boy.’
‘I wonder if they would,’ Clegg said slowly. ‘Once when we gave a show at a camp near Richmond, we were doing a sketch about two German officers and, just before it started, two of us strolled out, German uniforms and all, to buy some fags. The guard saluted us.’
Through the thinning clouds of dust, they headed the lorry back on to the road and round to the corrugated-iron sheds near the harbour. Nobody stopped them. Nobody even looked twice at them. Most of the soldiers they saw, wearing only shorts and shirts as they were, were keeping their heads down against the flying sand, while the Arabs were muffled to the eyebrows in their robes. Near the sea the bombing had reduced the area to heaps of shattered walls, splintered wood and twisted iron, and Caccia drove the lorry into a half-collapsed shed. It effectively hid them from sight and they clambered down and stood in a group again, wondering what the hell to do next.
‘I think we should sit on our bums here until we can take off,’ Morton suggested. ‘But not too long.’ He indicated the cigarette ends that lay under the surrounding trees, the bare patches of oily ground, the marks of tyres and the discarded British petrol cans. ‘By the look of it, this is a favourite camping ground for motorized troops and when the Italians take over properly there’ll probably be a lot of ’em round here. We’ll make a dash for it after dark.’
‘Oh, will we?’ Caccia snorted. ‘We’d catch a right old cold if we ran on to mines. Especially me in the driver’s cab. We’ll do it in daylight. Dusk perhaps. We might make it at dusk.’
‘Suppose we run into a patrol?’ Clegg asked.
‘We could wear the Italian hats and things,’ Morton said. ‘I speak good Italian.’
‘Oh, do you?’ Jones was clearly going through one of his periods of nervous tension. ‘Perfect, is it, then?’
‘Yes, you stupid little man!’ Morton snapped. ‘I’ve spoken it all my life.’
‘So how does that bloody help us?’
Morton stared at Jones as if he had crawled out from under a stone. Sometimes he looked as if he had. ‘We have Caccia,’ he pointed out. ‘He speaks Italian because his family speak Italian. Cleggy has a few words. Even you, you little Welsh twit, can speak the few phrases we use in the sketches.’ Morton gestured, suddenly in control of the situation. ‘That makes two who speak it well and two who can get by with a few words they’ve picked up. Che bel tempo. What lovely weather. Fa freddo. Fa caldo. It’s cold. It’s hot. We ought to be able to bluff our way past with that. Jonesy could always have a go at “Santa Lucia”. Surely that would convince them.’
‘In a Bedford lorry?’
‘The war’s been going on long enough out here for there to be a lot of each on either side.’
‘We’ve got British div. numbers,’ Caccia pointed out. ‘They stick out like the Rock of Ages in a fog.’
‘Then let’s get an Italian div. sign and you can screw it on over the one we’ve got.’
For the first time they began to discern a glimmer of hope. ‘Think we can do it?’ Clegg asked.
‘You saw the lorries back there,’ Morton said. ‘What’s to stop us going out after dark and helping ourselves?’
‘And then?’
‘Then we set off east. A bunch of Italians led by a German officer.’
‘You?’
‘My German’s as good as my Italian.’
‘They told you so in Berlin, I suppose?’
‘No. Innsbruck and Munich.’
Clegg managed a grin. ‘Well, that makes everything all right, doesn’t it? Lancelot Hugh Morton’s going to save us and win himself a Victoria Cross.’
‘Boy,’ Caccia said. ‘What it is to have courage on our side!’
Morton looked at them stonily but they knew it was an idea and they accepted that at least they’d be doing something. They’d been running simply because nobody had thought of shouting ‘Stop’. Now that Morton had offered them a plan – even if, as they suspected, it was a bloody awful plan – it was better than nothing. The desert was big and easy to hide in and, until they were forced to give up, nobody fancied ending up behind barbed wire.
* * *
Hatless and with his uniform devoid of British insignia, Warrant Officer Rafferty stood in the doorway of the wrecked warehouse where they’d hidden their vehicles, and peered out into the growing darkness.
Even as they had discovered their dilemma and decided to disappear southwards into the desert, another column of trucks and light tanks had appeared up the hill and an Italian military policeman on a motorbike had waved them to get out of the way into the town.
‘I’m thinkin’, sir,’ Rafferty had murmured under his breath to Dampier, ‘that we’d better do as he says.’
Dampier had looked startled. ‘Go into the town?’
‘We don’t seem to have much option, sir. If we go the other way someone will want to know why. There are plenty of ruins in Zuq, so we’ll collar one of the old warehouses and use it to do somethin’ to disguise ourselves so we can slip out again after dark.’
It hadn’t been difficult to find a shed near the harbour that had been wrecked by a bomb. It was built of corrugated iron, had a distinctly drunken look about it and was minus one end. To hide their nationality they had parked the vehicles stern-outwards and carefully draped blankets across the tailgates to hide the British army signs until they could do something to remove them. There was room for no other vehicle and nobody could get past.
Nobody came near them, although throughout the evening Italian vehicles in columns roared into the town towards the vehicle park at the old fort, and in the darkness they heard the squeak of brakes, the sound of excited laughter and the clank of chains as tailgates were dropped and men climbed out. By this time the wind was fading.
‘Got any ideas, Mr Rafferty?’ Dampier asked.
‘We can try going south, sir. That’s what we did when we were cut off in 1940. Tomorrow night, perhaps. Unfortunately, we don’t have much food or water. Come to that, not much petrol either.’
Inevitably Clutterbuck set up a wail. ‘What about me?’ he said. ‘If I’d stayed with 38 Light Aid Duties, I’d ’ave been all right. Dow and Raye’ll be waitin’ for me, I bet.’
‘I bet they won’t,’ Dampier snapped. ‘They’ll have heard by now that the Italians are on the move and, if they’re anything like you, they’ll stay where it’s safe.’
As they became silent again, they grew aware of movement all round them in the dark. They heard engines and brakes again, the murmur of voices and once a sharp tenor laugh that didn’t sound like a British laugh. Then they heard the clatter of dixies, and the clink of bottles, and someone shouted.
‘Guido, i freni sono guasti!’
There was a laugh. ‘Che fortuna. C’è un garage qui vicino.’
‘Italians,’ Dampier murmured. ‘What are they saying?’
‘Something about his brakes not working,’ Rafferty said. ‘The other feller suggested he should take it to a garage. My Italian’s not very good.’
‘It must be a whole column, Mr Rafferty. What should we do? Pity we can’t do them some damage.’
‘Much better to clear off,’ Clutterbuck whined.
Rafferty was silent, listening, then he stared into the darkness again, his whole body al
ert. He looked like a terrier at a rathole.
‘What’s on your mind, Mr Rafferty?’ Dampier demanded. ‘Something obviously is.’
‘Thought I might just scout round to see what’s goin’ on, sir. Might pick up some information we could take back.’
Dampier stared at him. The urge actually to see the enemy, something which had been plaguing him since the war had started, got the better of him.
‘Two heads are better than one,’ he said. ‘I’ll come with you. I’m an old man and nobody will miss me if anything goes wrong.’
Leaving Clinch and Micklethwaite to make sure Clutterbuck didn’t bolt, they moved off into the darkness, bent double more out of instinct than necessity because it was quite dark. The last of the wind was lifting the sand in little whorls and dragging trails of it across the surface of the road. The hissing of the grit was surprisingly loud now that they were silent, and every now and then they heard the clatter of a parched bush, uprooted by the wind, the creak of branches and the rattling of the dried fronds of the palms. Almost before they realized it, they were blundering into the back of a lorry. The Italian crew, eating their evening meal with the others in some shelter they’d found nearby out of the wind, were nowhere in sight.
‘The buggers sound cheerful,’ Dampier said resentfully.
‘So they should be, sorr. They’ve kicked us out of Zuq.’
Dampier studied the lorry. ‘Can we steal it, Mr Rafferty?’
Rafferty shook his head. ‘No keys, sir.’
‘We could short-circuit the ignition.’
‘Make too much noise, sir. They’d hear us start up.’ Rafferty’s teeth gleamed in the darkness as he smiled. ‘Much better to do a bit of damage and syphon the petrol out. There’s an empty can in here with a tool kit, complete with hammer and screwdriver.’
Reaching into the darkness, he produced the can, clanking it softly against the door as he lifted it out with the hammer and screwdriver, then he moved quietly round the vehicle until he found the petrol tank.
Placing the point of the screwdriver against the tank, he gave the handle a sharp whack with the hammer. The chattering of the Italians, the rattling of the palm fronds and the moving bundles of brushwood drowned the sound. Unscrewing the petrol cap, Rafferty threw it away and they stood for a while in the dark, listening to the petrol running into the can from the hole they’d made.
‘That ought to surprise them when they come to drive it away,’ Dampier murmured delightedly as Rafferty screwed the cap on the full can. ‘Think we could hole another, Mr Rafferty? So they can’t chase us.’
‘Perhaps more than one, sir. The more the merrier, because the Italians make a point of never chasing anyone unless they outnumber ’em five hundred to one.’ Synchronizing their activity with the outbursts of laughter from where the Italians were eating in a group just out of sight among the trees, they managed to puncture three more tanks, lift a couple of rifles and remove the valves from several tyres. The wind and the rattling of dried shrubs drowned the small sounds they made.
‘Terrible careless, thim Italians, sorr,’ Rafferty observed.
Moving towards the tail of the stationary column, Dampier was just beginning to enjoy himself when Rafferty laid a hand on his arm and the two of them sank to the sand. Just ahead they became aware of someone moving and the faint clink of tools. There was no sign of a light.
‘Repairs?’ Dampier said. ‘In the dark?’
Then they heard a quiet voice in the shadows. ‘You’ve dropped the spanner, you silly sod!’
There was no mistaking the Englishness of it and Rafferty lifted his head. Glancing at Dampier, he looked again and raised himself slightly.
‘Who’s there?’ he called softly.
There was an abrupt silence, then the voice spoke again, awed, scared and shaken. ‘Jesus Christ!’ it said.
Rafferty’s teeth showed in the darkness as he grinned. ‘I dare bet it’s not,’ he said. ‘He trained as a carpenter not a motor mechanic, and it wasn’t in this desert He did His forty days and forty nights.’
Chapter 2
There were three men wearing Italian caps and carrying screwdrivers and spanners, and all looking scared.
‘Who in God’s name are you?’ Dampier whispered.
‘Sergeant Clegg,’ one of the shadowy figures said. ‘Corporal Morton. Driver Caccia.’
‘What the hell are you doing here?’
‘Come to that,’ Clegg said. ‘What are you?’
‘Just answer the bloody question!’
There was a clipped authoritative note in the words and Clegg decided it might be as well to concede the initiative.
‘We were helping ourselves to one of the Italian number plates. We were going to stick it on our own lorry. We were cut off and thought it would help us get away. Are you cut off, too?’
‘What do you think, man?’ Dampier snapped.
Clegg ignored the rebuke. ‘We’ve seen the Italians using captured British lorries,’ he said. ‘And Morton here – that is, Corporal Morton – speaks the lingo, and he stuck some Italian words on ours to make it look Italian. You know, that thing they paint on walls.’
‘Combattere, obbedire, vincere,’ Morton said. ‘We thought an Italian sign might help a bit.’
‘Have you still got the paint?’ Dampier asked.
‘Which paint?’
‘The paint you used to write the words on your lorry. Perhaps we could use it on ours.’
Clegg glanced at the other two. ‘It wasn’t paint. Well, not that sort of paint. It was greasepaint. Black. No. 12.’
‘Greasepaint?’ Dampier looked at Rafferty. ‘Who in God’s name are you?’
‘We’re a concert party.’
‘A what, for God’s sake?’
‘A concert party. Who’re you?’
Rafferty decided it was time to identify themselves. ‘This is Colonel Dampier,’ he said. ‘Inspector of Equipment to the Eighth Army. I’m Warrant Officer Rafferty.’
Dampier still seemed startled to be meeting anything so bizarre as a concert party behind the Italian lines. ‘Not fighting troops then?’ he said. Hearing the quality of contempt in his voice, it crossed Clegg’s mind that an Inspector of Equipment and his unit were hardly the Brigade of Guards either. ‘They’re not going to be a lot of help, Mr Rafferty.’
‘You might be surprised,’ Morton said coolly. ‘We’ve got some Italian uniforms.’
Dampier cranked his head round slowly. ‘You’ve got what?’
‘Italian uniforms,’ Clegg said. ‘Well – bits of uniforms. We used them in a sketch about this German officer and these Italian soldiers who—’
Dampier interrupted sharply. ‘Where are the rest of your people?’
‘There’s only one more.’
‘Only one?’ It had been in Dampier’s mind that if the concert party were big enough and had had any training at all they might be encouraged to attempt to overwhelm any opposition they met.
‘We’re not the cast from Covent Garden Opera House,’ Morton said stiffly. ‘There are four of us.’
‘Songs and sketches,’ Clegg added. ‘To amuse the troops. Keep it simple, the general said. Jones the Song – that is, Private Jones – he’s our tenor. He’s the only other one. He’s back there with the lorry under the trees. Biting his nails, I expect, and having a headache.’
Dampier wasn’t sure whether to accept the Ratbags as a welcome addition to his party or, because they were likely to be more hindrance than help, simply abandon them to their fate; it was Rafferty who made the decision.
‘I think we’d better join forces, don’t you, sir?’
Dampier ummed and aahed a bit, knowing full well it was his duty to collect any odds and sods that had been left lying around, but none too willing to jeopardize the chances of his own group.
‘Go and collect this chap of yours,’ he conceded in the end. ‘We’ll wait here. Think you can find your way back?’
Clegg soon returned wi
th the lorry and Jones, who was scared out of his wits by his stay alone. They were just on the point of returning to where Dampier’s vehicles were waiting when Rafferty lifted his head.
‘Hold on, sir,’ he said.
Over the whisperings of the wind and the clattering of the dry bushes, they heard the murmur of engines.
‘Aeroplanes, sir.’
‘Ours?’
‘They don’t sound like theirs, sir. It’s the RAF. They’re after the harbour.’
The sound grew louder and there were shouts from behind them as the Italians were also alerted to the approaching aircraft; then, seconds after an air-raid siren went, they heard the first of the bombs coming down.
‘Jesus, this is a proper old game, played slow!’ Caccia complained as they bolted for a nearby drainage ditch. ‘Bombed by our own bloody side!’
Fortunately, none of the bombs came near, but the flashes lit up the sky and they could feel the thump of the explosives, as if through the veins and bones of the earth. There was a great deal of shouting from among the parked lorries nearby and the sound of engines starting, then there was a tremendous flare of flame, a huge blossoming flower of red edged with black smoke that spoke of petrol going up. Rafferty’s teeth showed in a grin.
‘Somebody t’rew a cigarette down where we punctured their petrol tanks, sir,’ he said cheerfully.
Almost immediately, there were two more flares of red, as if sparks from the first explosive rush of flame had ignited a second and a third pool of petrol. In the glare they could see the square silhouetted shapes of lorries and the figures of running men. A few of the vehicles were moving off now but the flames had attracted the aircraft overhead and the second and third waves were aiming at them as they came in. Bombs whistled down among the vehicles and they saw more of them explode.
The shouts grew more alarmed and the lorries that were on the move began to lurch away more quickly. Shouting men – obviously the crews of the lost vehicles – were running after them. One of them was carrying a heavy bundle on his shoulder which they saw him toss aside to run faster. Eventually the whole lot of them had disappeared, leaving only the burning vehicles and a few scattered items of dropped equipment.
