Up For Grabs

by Max Hennessy

  ‘I trust so,’ Morton snapped. ‘Our motto is “Honour with Courage”.’ That should convince the sod, he thought maliciously. A phoney wouldn’t be expected to know that fact.

  Scarlatti was showing signs of impatience. He didn’t like being thrust out of the limelight by a subordinate, especially when the subordinate appeared to know more about the nobility than he did himself. ‘What a pity your heavy equipment hasn’t yet arrived,’ he said.

  Morton smiled. ‘Il mondo è di chi ha pazienza. The world is his who has patience. It’ll turn up. I heard from my friend Baron Malaparte, of the Alpini, that it was seen by the Marchese Fulco in El Adem.’ He shrugged and produced a long story about being attached first to the Trieste Division, then to the Liguria Division and finally to the Ariete Division – all of which he knew from his period with Intelligence to be in the desert – until now, with the last move, he wasn’t sure what division they belonged to.

  The name-dropping impressed Scarlatti. ‘You must be attached to me,’ he insisted at once. ‘You must draw rations, petrol, water, everything you need, from my dump. I’ll send you timber, paint, stencils and brushes for your signs. You can then make it clear who you are.’ He cleared his throat noisily. ‘And might I suggest, count, that beneath the information you state that you’re part of my own 7th Base Stores and Resupply Depot.’ He beamed, showing a mouthful of gold teeth. ‘So that there’ll be no difficulties if questions are asked. Indeed, count, why don’t you move alongside my dump? It must be most uncomfortable for you here. We’d welcome you into our mess and we’d be delighted to have your company, wouldn’t we, Faiani?’

  Morton’s excuses had been prepared long since. He was there to work not with base troops but with the men in the desert and, though he appreciated the major’s interest and concern, patriotism had to come first. The Duce had demanded virile attitudes to the war, had he not?

  Scarlatti didn’t take quite such an astringent view of his duties but he was more than prepared to supply them with what they needed. As he climbed back into his car, Faiani climbed into the Fiat. He was looking puzzled. With the information he’d received from Naples, he’d felt he could trip up any false Count Barda, but Morton had offered more information on him than even Naples knew. He still wasn’t satisfied but he knew he was going to have to think again.

  * * *

  That afternoon a lorry sent by Scarlatti brought paint, stencils, brushes, cartons of pasta, tins of meat and tomatoes, cheese, bread, flour, fruit and wine. The man who drove it had heard the rumours of a new advance and – like his comrades – wasn’t relishing the idea. He didn’t like the desert and was scared stiff of the RAF and the Long Range Desert Group, the new British outfit which had taken to prowling far behind the Italian lines. Mainly recruited from the teeming cities of central Italy, the driver and his friends were baffled by the vast empty spaces where the war in Africa was being fought, and they knew that, if the Italian army advanced, without doubt they’d be following it – away from the comparative security of Zuq and the ships that linked them to Italy.

  In no time the little camp sprouted a forest of white-painted, black-lettered notices, one of them firmly stating their identity: UNITA DI RIPARAZIONE DI VEICOLI LEGGERI 64.

  ‘If it moves, salute it,’ Clegg said. ‘If it doesn’t, paint it white.’

  The following day two of Scarlatti’s lorries appeared for servicing. Faiani brought them, driving ahead of them in the little Fiat. He hung about the camp as the lorries were unloaded, his eyes alert, as usual saying little but always watchful. For safety, Morton never moved from his side and, because of his knowledge of Count Barda and the knowledge of the Italian army he had acquired in Intelligence, he was able to counter every carefully worded question.

  It troubled Faiani. So much so he’d even tried to discuss it with the despised Scarlatti. But it had got him nowhere. Scarlatti had lived too long with the effects of influence and had too many irons in the fire of which he hoped to take advantage. It had made Faiani frustrated and irritable. He felt he ought to be able to trip up an impostor and the fact that he couldn’t left him short-tempered and finally silent.

  Under tarpaulins in the lorries were tyres and spare parts, and on Dampier’s instructions the drivers were given food, with plenty of wine, and encouraged to talk. It wasn’t difficult because one of them, an avowed communist who’d been in the Italian disasters in Greece, was loud in his contempt for that profitless campaign, which he condemned as an example of political improvidence, military incompetence, petty ambition and strategic and tactical shortsightedness.

  ‘Started out of pure pique,’ he said. ‘Mussolini just wanted to show Hitler he could conduct a blitzkrieg, too.’

  When Scarlatti himself appeared, Morton thanked him with a bow.

  ‘Faiani tells me you come from Organo in the Apennines.’ Scarlatti had also obviously been doing some homework. ‘I have interests there. My father-in-law has a business that covers the area and I am a partner. But we’ve never been able to attract much attention. Perhaps the count might pass the word among his friends.’

  Morton’s face was blank. ‘It could be possible. After the war. Providing, of course, the Duce has chosen the right side and we win.’

  Like many Italians aware that Mussolini wasn’t the man he claimed to be, Scarlatti wasn’t sure how to answer. He knew the failings of the Italian army only too well, how conscription had produced nothing because there were never enough uniforms or equipment; how divisions had been reduced from three regiments to two – a piece of legerdemain that enabled the Duce to claim he had sixty divisions instead of the twenty-odd he really had; how, to bolster his claim of motorization, the police had to lend their vehicles to be painted in army colours for the military parades and hurriedly had to repaint them again on their return.

  Scarlatti’s driver, a lugubrious private called Mondi, who had been brought in out of the desert with jaundice and given the job of driving Scarlatti about until he recovered, echoed his thoughts. Like most private soldiers, he loathed the desert.

  ‘Sometimes when you dig fortifications,’ he said, ‘it’s as hard as rock and a pick or shovel makes no mark. At other times, it falls away beneath your feet.’

  The wind, the disembodied silence, had scared him and he talked with horror of the khamsin, the drying wind which surrounded everybody in a cloud of fire and whirling sand.

  ‘Two men lost last time,’ he told Caccia. ‘We found them shrivelled up like mummies. One had stones clutched in his fists. The other had shot himself through the head. Their eyes were dry as prunes and their mouths were full of sand.’

  He had a fondness for English gin and was always on the cadge for it. ‘It scares away the bullets and makes you forget the war,’ he claimed. ‘I just hope when I’m killed they bury me deep down so the jackals won’t get me.’ He sighed. ‘Mussolini’s filled Rome with fasces, flags, fine phrases and fancy claims,’ he went on. ‘But he never did much for me.’

  ‘May the Lord protect us,’ Caccia intoned piously.

  ‘Will the Lord really protect us?’

  ‘Of course He will.’

  ‘What about the ones who are dead?’ Mondi’s face contained all the good cheer of an elderly bloodhound’s. ‘He didn’t protect them.’

  Chapter 7

  Even the Germans seemed to have accepted them. After all, they wore Italian caps and Italian tunics with Italian insignia on them, even some of them the ugly Italian trousers. And they used Italian tools on Italian vehicles. They had to be Italians.

  The grumbling from the hoi-polloi died and apart from a doubtful wariness the nervousness disappeared. They were tucked well out of the way of the main traffic, which was largely round the fort, and they were rarely bothered. Dampier’s idea began to seem not only possible but even very practical.

  From time to time a German vehicle stopped alongside them, its driver asking the way or offering to barter rations for wine. The Germans were suffering from dysen
tery and, almost as badly off for food as the Italians, were always on the lookout for supplies. They ate the same tinned meat as the Italians, from tins marked AM (Administrazione Militare) but known to the Italians as Asinus Mussolini (Mussolini’s Donkey) or Arabo Morte (Dead Arab) and to the Germans as Alter Mann (Old Man). Occasionally a little cheese or olive oil came their way but never any potatoes, which they loved, and they drooled at the thought of captured British rations.

  Among them was the German sergeant they had seen tormenting the Italian girl outside the Bar Barbieri near the harbour. His name was Schwartzheiss and he worked as a chief stores clerk just to the west of Zuq where the Germans had set up tank workshops far better than anything the British possessed. Embedded in concrete under canvas were big lathes and a heavy smithy, and they had tank precision instruments by the truckload, boxes of periscopes, 50 mm guns, sheets of armour, tracks, tyres, woodwork and steel parts.

  ‘We could build tanks from scratch if we had to,’ Schwartzheiss told Morton. ‘In fact, we did when we first arrived. Dummy ones. Wooden, on old car frames. But then’ – he grinned – ‘we always did have a few extra tricks up our sleeve, didn’t we, tenente? When we landed, there weren’t many of us so we marched several times round Tripoli to make it seem there were more of us than there were.’

  He had an engaging personality, with a wide smile, an infectious laugh, and an obvious sense of mischief that was tickled by any suggestion of outrageous fraud.

  ‘It was a funny time, that,’ he went on. ‘While we were building up, the Tommies thought there were only a few disorganized Italians to face. And, while we thought the Tommies were going to come down on us like a lot of ravening wolves, we found out later that all the experienced ones had gone to Greece and been replaced by an inexperienced lot newly out from home.’

  He offered a cigarette – a British Gold Flake, Morton noticed. ‘Still,’ he went on. ‘It didn’t matter much, because old Mussolini had already messed it up, hadn’t he? He’s already lost half his navy, the war’s being won without him and his adventure in the Balkans has gone sour. He not only deluded Italy, he deluded himself, which is worse.’

  ‘You don’t think much of fascism, sergeant?’ Morton tried.

  Schwartzheiss smiled enigmatically. ‘I’m just a German soldier fighting for his country,’ he said. ‘And your army doesn’t contribute a lot, does it, tenente? Artillery that came from Austria after the last bunfight. No anti-aircraft guns at all. And those tanks of yours – Himmelherrgott! Most of them come to a grinding halt whenever they’re used.’

  Morton listened with a faint growing indignation. He had heard it all before from captured Italians while in Intelligence but now it was with a vague sense of resentment at the German’s smug self-satisfaction. He could only put it down to the Italian tunic and cap he was wearing. He thrust his thoughts aside and tried probing. ‘I’m surprised your Führer allied himself to us,’ he said.

  Schwartzheiss grinned. ‘I expect he knows as much about it as most politicians.’ He gazed at Morton. ‘I suppose a lot of Italians feel the same about what goes on in Rome.’

  ‘Most of us are aware.’

  Schwartzheiss frowned. ‘It’s the flies that get me down most about this place,’ he said. ‘Always wanting first bite at your food. Afrika ist Scheiss. Africa is shit. Come to that, Krieg ist Scheiss. War is shit, too.’

  Morton smiled and Schwartzheiss went on with the arrogant contempt of all Germans for all Italians. ‘All Mussolini’s after is glory. We’re only here to enhance his prestige.’

  Morton smiled again. ‘And we’re only here to make up your numbers.’

  Schwartzheiss laughed. ‘It’s a marriage of convenience, tenente,’ he agreed. ‘Not one of joy. Still, why should I worry? The real estate’s Italian not German. At the moment, though’ – he shrugged – ‘Nichts klappt. Nothing works. And I’ll bet nobody knows it better than your boys.’

  Though Schwartzheiss was friendly enough, No. 64 Light Vehicle Repair Unit were glad to see the back of him. The Germans were twice as alert as the Italians and twice as shrewd, and their Intelligence, unlike Italian Intelligence, which was reputed to spy less on the enemy than on doubtful friends, was efficient. After his departure, with their eyes constantly straying towards the road in case a squad of German field police appeared, it took them the rest of the day to calm down.

  They had just begun to feel safe when two Mercedes cars appeared over the brow of the slope. Micklethwaite was on lookout, sitting on the edge of the wadi nursing a split finger he’d caught in one of the lorry doors and dreaming of the bestseller he intended to write when he returned to the British lines. He was just wondering how to spend the royalties when he became aware of the two cars and of high-peaked long-visored caps such as German officers wore.

  ‘Oh, my God,’ he croaked and scuttled at once to Dampier’s tent, where Dampier, Rafferty and Morton were holding a conference.

  ‘Visitors!’ he bleated. ‘They look like Germans!’

  Convinced they were German field police sent by Schwartzheiss, they waited nervously. Unaware of what was going on, in one of the tents Jones the Song was shaving in the mirror of a Lancia truck. Dampier had told him to smarten himself up because he looked scruffy even for the Italian he was supposed to be impersonating and he was consoling himself with a verse or two of ‘Land of My Fathers’:

  ‘…Ei gwrol ryfelwyr, gwladgarwyr tramâd,

  Tros ryddid collsant eu gwaed,

  Gwlad, Gwlad…’

  Jones thought a lot of the land of his fathers and his splendid high tenor soared up to scratch at the sky.

  As the cars slowed in a drifting cloud of yellow dust, Morton stepped forward, smart in his Italian officer’s tunic. Following the drill they had devised, somebody had also warned Caccia and he waited nearby with Clegg, ready to supply Italian chatter in case anybody was listening who might understand.

  As the cars stopped, a tall German officer with a general’s badges and a thin sensitive face climbed out, followed by a younger officer who was obviously his aide. The general was dressed in drill slacks and jacket. The younger officer wore shorts.

  Morton drew a deep breath. Ordinary, brutalized Italian soldiers, not too well educated and knowing nothing of the rest of the world, were one thing; Schwartzheiss, shrewd, clever, a German with a German’s efficiency, was another; this man, a general, knowing everything, a man with authority who knew what made an army – any army – tick, was still another.

  The German general, however, seemed less interested in 64 Light Vehicle Repair Unit than in the offside-rear tyre of his car. ‘Il pneumatico si è—’ He stopped and looked enquiringly at the younger officer.

  ‘Sgonfiato,’ the younger man prompted from a dictionary he held.

  ‘So!’ The general turned again to Morton. ‘II pneumatico si è sgonfiato. Per favore—’

  As he paused, Morton smiled. ‘I speak German, excellency,’ he said.

  The German smiled. ‘So? That makes it much easier. I am General Erwin, 4th Light Division. The tyre needs air. Is it possible to inflate it?’

  ‘Of course, excellency. We have compressed air.’ They hadn’t but Morton had no doubt someone – probably Jones, who was least likely to object – could be bullied into doing the job manually. ‘It’s punctured, perhaps? Perhaps the general would like me to check it?’

  Erwin glanced at the aide. ‘Why not?’ he said. ‘Räder mussen rollen für den Sieg. Wheels must turn for victory, eh? One of Dr Goebbels’s latest slogans. Some people might call it one of the German atrocities we hear so much about. Please fix it. We have plenty of time.’

  For a moment he stood with his head cocked listening to Jones, who was still in full spate.

  ‘…Trwy deimlad gwladgarol, mor swynol yw si

  Ei mentyff, afonydd i mi,

  Gwlad, Gwlad…’

  Clegg caught Morton’s frantic look and gestured at Clinch. ‘Shut that bloody fool up,’ he hissed.

&n
bsp; Having disposed of the land of his fathers, Jones was now into ‘Guide me, O, thou Great Jehovah’.

  ‘…Dal fi pan bwy’n teithieo’r manau

  Gierwon yn fy ffordd y sydd:

  Rho imi fanna,

  Fel no bwyf yn llwfrau…’

  As Clinch arrived and the song stopped abruptly, the German officer shrugged.

  ‘Che peccato,’ he said. ‘What a pity! He has a splendid voice. He is a professional, perhaps?’

  ‘No, excellency,’ Morton said. ‘He just sings because he likes singing. They all do. They aren’t Berufssoldaten – regular soldiers – just peasants in uniform. From the mountains. Mountaineers always sing. You’ll have heard the Swiss, I expect.’

  ‘You should encourage him,’ Erwin suggested. ‘There’s little enough beauty in the world. Especially these days. But that’s surely not Italian he’s using? My Italian isn’t good but I can recognize it when I hear it.’

  Morton thought fast. ‘A dialect, excellency.’

  ‘Of course. He comes from the mountains.’

  ‘Near Stresa.’

  ‘So! Austrian territory originally. I expect it’s a crude form of German. I thought I recognized one or two of the words.’

  You were clever if you did, Morton thought. Nobody but the Welsh understood Welsh, and not all of them.

  Erwin smiled. ‘I’m going out into the desert there,’ he said. ‘Stracka’ – he gestured at the aide – ‘and I are watercolour enthusiasts. We’ve noticed that from there you can get a glimpse of the roofs and palm trees of Zuq. It’s a splendid subject.’

  ‘I have little to offer in the way of refreshment, excellency, but perhaps—’

  Erwin waved away the offer. ‘Don’t bother, tenente. We’ve brought food for the day.’ He gestured at the driver of the second car. ‘Obergefreiter Bomberg there has prepared something. We’ll pick up the car on the way back.’

  Confident of his skill with Erwin’s language, Morton decided it might be wiser if he didn’t. Jones the Song might well be singing ‘I’m Dreaming Of A White Christmas’ by then. ‘I’ll bring it to you, excellency,’ he said. ‘As soon as it’s repaired. An hour or so, no more. Perhaps I might be permitted to see your work. I’ve always been interested in watercolours.’