Up For Grabs

by Max Hennessy

  ‘It’s like being retired,’ he admitted to Rafferty.

  ‘Arrah, sir, yourself’ll soon get used to it,’ Rafferty smiled.

  ‘It’s my duty, if possible,’ Dampier reminded him tartly, ‘to get these chaps back to the British lines.’

  ‘Then I’m thinkin’, sir, ’twould be best to do as the officer says.’

  Dampier gave him a suspicious look.

  Later in the day, he drew Morton to one side and suggested he might give him a few tips on how to conduct himself.

  Morton was casual. ‘Oh, I don’t think that will be necessary, thank you,’ he said. ‘It’s really just a question of behaviour, isn’t it? A gentleman’s a gentleman whether he’s wearing brass on his shoulder or not.’

  Dampier glared. ‘I was thinking of military behaviour.’

  ‘Oh, that’s all right, too. I’ve been in the army long enough now to know how officers behave. Some of them, I’ve often thought, might have profited by a lesson or two in good manners.’

  As he stalked away, Dampier stared after him with his jaw hanging open. He turned to see Rafferty watching him.

  ‘That damned man’s getting ideas too big for his head, Mr Rafferty,’ he said.

  * * *

  There were now two Bedford three-tonners, two fifteen-hundredweight tracks and Dampier’s Humber. They were all dusty and, with the exception of the Humber which, being a staff car, was deemed to need a measure of dignity, were all plastered with the enthusiastic slogans the Italians enjoyed seeing – the usual Combattere, Obbedire, Vincere, and a few others that Morton had thought up: Evviva Mussolini; Avanti; In Viaggio per Londra; and Attenti, Inglesi! Veniamo Qui!

  They had attached the Italian flag to the front of the Humber so that it fluttered red, white and green in the wind, and they started off cheerfully enough in the late evening. Rafferty, his sleeves devoid of badges, led in Dampier’s car, with Morton alongside him and Dampier, to his disgust, sitting in the back among the equipment. Caccia brought up the rear in the Ratbags’ Bedford in case anybody came up from behind, while the rest were stuffed in between. Their progress south-east from Zuq went quite unhindered until at dusk they ran into units of German field police strung across their route. As they stopped, Morton climbed out, marched forward and spoke quickly in German. The German officer who answered him gestured towards the east. ‘Etwas gehts los im Osten,’ he said.

  Morton responded in the same language and there was a brief discussion before he returned to the car to inform Dampier and Rafferty what had been said. ‘We’ll not get past here,’ he pointed out quietly. ‘Things are happening towards the east and they’re here to mark the junction of the Italian and German divisions. I think we should swop one or two of our vehicles at the first opportunity because he was a bit suspicious at seeing them all British. I told him we were a recovery unit and had picked them all up after they’d been abandoned.’

  He climbed into his seat, still talking quietly. ‘He also said we should be heading north and seemed at first to suspect we were trying to desert because we were too far forward. I told him our compass was kaput and he seemed satisfied.’

  Gesturing with his arm for the benefit of the German, he led the little convoy north until they had swung over a ridge of dunes, when they promptly turned south once more. Almost immediately they ran into the German field police again. A carbide lamp appeared in front of them, swinging to indicate they should stop.

  There was a long exchange between Morton and a German sergeant before they were turned back again. Rafferty decided it might be safer to head north for a while, after all, if only to get away from the suspicious Germans and back within the sphere of influence of the more easygoing Italians, who were always short of transport and less likely to question the origin of their vehicles. It was as well they did, because five minutes later a German kübelwagen came tearing up behind them, the German sergeant waving them further westwards.

  ‘This is a bloody well-organized battle,’ Clegg observed.

  To the east the sky was filled with smoke from burning lorries to show where the fighting was going on and hundreds of vehicles had ploughed deep ruts in the soft sand. When they stopped and the engines were silent, they could hear the thump and rumble of gunfire.

  Eventually they tried to edge southwards again but once more they ran into the German field police and were forced to head north again. They were all tired and dusty now, all on edge and nervy, and wondering just when some German field police sergeant would examine them closely enough to discover their identity. It was beginning to grow light again by this time and the Italians they met were elated by their unexpected success. But they were forward troops and no one claiming to be a repair unit had any right to be so far forward; so, as the sun came up like a gigantic gun flash on the horizon, they were forced to head westwards again and finally found themselves approaching Sofi, a shabby little village alongside the sea east of Zuq. Half the place seemed to be on fire and there were explosions and clouds of smoke. From a burning hut, Italians were carrying crates of British beer.

  ‘I bet there wasn’t a lot left, comrades and boon companions,’ Clegg said, eyeing it enviously. ‘I bet our lot got in there when the retreat started. Free beer’s free beer even if the Empire falls apart, and bottled Bass’s a bloody sight better than that horse piss and onion water that goes by the name of beer in Egypt.’

  There were also cartons of chocolate, cigarettes that made their nostrils twitch, and Italian soldiers grinning under piles of British shirts, trousers, overcoats, shoes, tinned ham, fish and cheese, and bottles of liqueur.

  Near the beach, the Italians had marked out an area as big as a football pitch and one group of them was busy knocking posts into the ground while second, third and fourth groups followed behind stringing barbed wire between them in rows. It was hot work and, since the Italians were stripped to the waist, it wasn’t difficult to help themselves to more scraps of uniform when no one was looking.

  The town itself started just beyond the cage, a huddle of flat-roofed, mud-built whitewashed houses with a mosque, a few palm trees and an apology for an inn that went by the name of the Sofi Hotel. There was a heavy traffic congestion with a column of British prisoners standing at the side of the road waiting for it to clear. Italian vehicles were parked at all angles and triumphant Italian officers were sitting on shabby chairs in the shade of a cane-roofed terrace outside the hotel, drinking wine, watched with envy and resentment by the prisoners, whose throats were working with thirst at the sight of the bottles on the tables.

  Their faces were grey with dust and blank of expression like the faces of all prisoners – as if being a prisoner stopped the emotions. Soldiers were ill fitted by their training to defeat and there was something embarrassing about seeing them. They looked exhausted and distressed and were watched in their turn by Arabs and heavily veiled women in black robes. A donkey in the last stages of debilitation, its ribs like the strings of a harp, and with running sores on its rump, strained in the shafts of a cart whose load almost lifted it from the ground. The Arab owner was whacking at it with a heavy stick, raising a cloud of dust as he pounded the wretched animal’s flank as if he were beating a carpet.

  ‘Let the poor bastard alone, you shit!’ one of the prisoners yelled and the Italian guards made menacing movements with their rifles as the shabby men showed signs of breaking their ranks to go to the aid of the donkey.

  ‘I know those faces,’ Clegg said quietly. ‘They’re that lot of Australians we gave a show to near Fayoum a week ago. They were due to move forward. They obviously did.’ He frowned and looked the other way. ‘The tall lance-jack with the chops there gave me a cigarette.’

  The lorry, moving forward an inch at a time, was now alongside the column of prisoners. There were a few jeers at the supposed Italians, which they tried to ignore, then the tall lance-corporal with the lantern jaw stared.

  ‘I’ve seen that sod before,’ he said, looking up at Clegg. ‘He looks
like that big Pommy bastard who came up with that concert party and did a soft shoe shuffle in an Arab nightshirt.’

  Clegg said nothing but when the lance-corporal repeated his comment he could contain himself no longer. ‘I am that big Pommy bastard who came up with the concert party and did a soft shoe shuffle in an Arab nightshirt,’ he said out of the corner of his mouth.

  The Australian’s jaw dropped. ‘What in Christ’s name are you doing in that get-up?’ he asked softly.

  ‘I’m escaping,’ Clegg said. ‘We all are.’

  As he spoke the wretched donkey collapsed with a crash and the slowly inching traffic came to a stop. The Italian guards gestured with their rifles and the column of prisoners began to thread their way between the stalled vehicles. The tall lance-corporal winked slowly at Clegg as he passed.

  ‘You lucky lot of Poms,’ he said loudly to the empty air.

  Chapter 4

  Morton, whose success seemed to be going to his head, stopped to talk to the Italian sottotenente in charge of the prisoners.

  ‘Che cosa c’è di nuovo oggi?’

  The Italian gestured and pointed, screwing his eyes up against the low sun.

  ‘He says our lot have pulled back sixty kilometres,’ Morton explained to Dampier. ‘That’s a long way. He also said the fighting’s slowing down now but that there’s to be a follow-up attack. But they need supplies and they’ve come up against our minefields on the other side of Sofi, so they’ve been ordered to regroup and re-equip. They’re expecting more prisoners and they’ll eventually be going to Zuq for shipment to Italy.’

  ‘Pity we can’t organize them and take the place,’ Dampier growled.

  He was itching to go to war in some way or other but he was well aware that moving east now that the line had stabilized and the area was packed with men was going to be harder than they had expected, and they had to have a base until the time was opportune for another shot.

  ‘What about Zuq?’ Morton suggested. ‘So far, nobody’s looked twice at us and we could go back there and try our luck.’

  There was something in what he said, because by this time they were all growing hungry and none of them wanted to stay in Sofi, which was small enough for them to stick out like sore thumbs.

  ‘We might be able to buy food in Zuq.’

  Clegg’s throat worked. ‘Think they’ll have beer?’

  ‘Perhaps we could steal a boat,’ Dampier offered. ‘Anybody know anything about boats?’

  It appeared that every man-jack of them had come from districts that were as far from the sea as it was possible to get, and nobody did.

  A few Bedou traders huddled in their galabiyahs in a group of palms near the mosque, their heads down, unmoved by the war that racketed backwards and forwards along the northern coast of Africa. Their rope-haltered camels knelt beside them in the shade, gurgling, belching and farting in the manner of all camels, and they parked in the shade alongside, hoping the Arabs might have food to sell. But, since the Arabs promptly approached them for food, it was obvious they weren’t going to get much; weak with hunger, they realized by the middle of the morning that before they could make another foray eastwards they would need to replenish their supplies, water and petrol. Finally, reluctantly, it was decided there was nothing for it but to do as Morton suggested and head back to Zuq.

  They arrived at noon. The town lay reflected in the still dark water of the harbour, its square white buildings sharp against the shadows. The civilian population had returned now that the fighting was over, and the place had come to life. Shops had taken down their shutters and among the Arabs were a few Italians too old to be called up into the army. Someone, it seemed, had finally towed out the smouldering ammunition ship and had just got it clear when it had blown up, so that a pall of smoke hung over the town. Along the water’s edge a crowd of people were still staring out to sea where it was possible to see the bow of the ship sticking out of the water, its name clear in the sunshine through the masts and rusty upperworks of the sunken vessels. A large freighter had appeared during the night and was anchored offshore, its cargo being transferred by motor lighters to the battered mole where a crowd of Italian soldiers and Arab labourers were carrying, pulling or pushing it towards a large supply dump on the edge of the town.

  In the midday glare the walls of the houses were dazzling and the heat was enough to strike them speechless. The few Germans they saw – and there weren’t many because under an agreement between the German and Italian commanders-in-chief Zuq was Italian territory – looked keen and well equipped in their grey jackets and peaked caps. By contrast, the Italians looked apathetic and poorly clad in khaki drill or plus-four-type trousers with ill-fitting bluish coats, like cyclists bereft of their cycles.

  As Dampier’s little group climbed down from their vehicles, wondering how and where to set about obtaining food, the work of unloading the freighter stopped and the stream of Italian soldiers, dusty, shabby and unshaven, collapsed. Bottles were passed round and sausages and bread appeared.

  Caccia’s throat worked. ‘Think we could cadge a bit?’ he said. ‘My guts are as empty as a last bus.’

  After a quarter of an hour a whistle shrilled and the groups of men stumbled to their feet and the work started once more. Dampier’s group were just on the point of turning away when Clegg gave a bleat of alarm. ‘Morton,’ he hissed. ‘There’s an Italian officer coming over here.’

  There was an immediate move towards the lorry but Morton stopped it dead. ‘Stay where you are!’ he snapped. ‘I can handle him.’

  The Italian officer, a small fat man with a major’s badges and strapped about like a Christmas tree with dangling map case, a pair of shabby binoculars and a pistol, was striding towards them, a look of determination on his face. Two steps behind him was another, younger officer, slender, dark, intense-looking, who wore the uniform of one of the crack Bersaglieri regiments and walked with a limp. Halting in front of Morton, the stout officer gave him a quivering fascist salute with outstretched arm.

  ‘Who are you?’ he demanded aggressively.

  Morton looked down on him with his cold stare. ‘Unità di Riparazione,’ he said. ‘Veicoli Leggeri. Numero 64.’

  The Italian seemed a little disconcerted and stared along the line of dusty vehicles. ‘Those are British,’ he said.

  ‘We’ve been engaged in collecting and repairing abandoned enemy transport,’ Morton explained.

  ‘Where are your own?’

  ‘Coming up behind. I’m looking for a site for my workshop. I’m Tenente Mortoni. Ugo, Conte di Barda. At your service.’

  The major’s head jerked up at the title Morton had awarded himself; he stiffened and adjusted his tunic. It was a well-pressed bush jacket which had probably originated in South Africa and had doubtless been part of the loot from the recent disaster at Mechili when Gambier-Parry’s divisional HQ and the 3rd Motor Brigade had been overwhelmed.

  ‘Scarlatti, Giulio. Major.’ His manner changed as he introduced himself. ‘Town major, under the immediate command of Commandante di Brigata Olivaro in Derna, and Commandante di Brigata Marziale, who has this area. I have command of No. 7 Base Stores and Resupply Dump, all ancillary services in the town, the harbour, the refuelling depot at the fort, the Arab labourers and the furniture factory, whose products it will eventually by my duty to commandeer for the war effort. This is my assistant, Sottotenente Faiani.’

  The younger man saluted smartly, his eyes searching Morton’s face. He looked puzzled. ‘Count,’ he said in greeting. ‘I didn’t recognize you.’

  ‘We’ve met?’ Morton’s heart thumped.

  ‘No, count.’ Faiani’s eyes were bright and shrewd. ‘But I’ve seen your pictures in the magazines. You’re taller than I expected.’

  Morton was momentarily disconcerted. Recognition was something he hadn’t expected and he didn’t like the look in Faiani’s eye.

  ‘Lost a lot of weight,’ he explained quickly. ‘Being thinner makes you look
taller.’ He decided it might be a good idea to change the subject and nodded casually to the barbed-wire compound nearby that surrounded a group of large huts. He affected to be totally unimpressed by what was clearly Scarlatti’s pride and joy. ‘That your dump?’ he asked.

  ‘Yes.’ Scarlatti answered briskly as if Morton was not showing sufficient awe. ‘It was an Italian dump the British took over. We’ve taken it back again. It’s my job to refit the army. It’s my duty to extend the dump and fill it with spares. I have supplies to unload and could do with every man I can get. Brigadier Olivaro has ordered me to get them under cover before the British planes spot them. He forgets that, unlike Colonel Ancillotti, who has the dump in Derna, I can’t call on thousands of base troops.’

  ‘My people,’ Morton pointed out quickly, ‘are just in from the desert. They’re tired and hungry.’

  ‘They look well equipped,’ Faiani said quietly.

  Morton lifted his eyebrows and the Italian explained.

  ‘Their boots,’ he said. ‘British boots.’ He turned to the Italian soldiers behind him, a long stream of human ants, some of them stripped to the waist, pushing carts or carrying equipment into the dump, and jerked a hand at the ugly boots they were wearing.

  ‘Our people wear the Duce’s yellowbacks,’ he said. ‘Cheap. Made by prisoners in jail.’

  Morton gestured. ‘We found a captured lorryload and helped ourselves.’

  Scarlatti sniffed. ‘Some of my men have had to stuff cardboard in where the soles have worn out.’ He eyed the British group. ‘Your men are quiet.’

  Morton was acting like mad to sound casual and indifferent. ‘They’re tired. And they’re from the mountains round Stresa. In fact they’re not like Italians at all. Until 1918, of course, they were Austrians. But they know what they want and if they don’t get it they make a point of taking it.’ It sounded like a threat.

  Scarlatti became almost apologetic. ‘It won’t take long, count. An hour or two. You can feed them with my people as soon as you’ve finished.’