by Max Hennessy
It was evening before they gained sight of the round dome of the mosque at Zuq. In the east they could still hear the roar of the battle and see the groups of Italian vehicles heading towards it.
They finally brewed up again in the dusk and lay down in the desert where they stood, crowding together in the wind to get what warmth they could from each other. Flat and lifeless during the day, in the late evening the desert was throwing dark shadows and the low sun was making a miracle of the yellow dunes. As the light vanished hundreds of thousands of stars appeared.
‘Beautiful.’ Dampier was trying to climb stiffly to his feet. ‘But cold, Mr Rafferty. Damn cold.’
When they rose at dawn the stars had all gone but there was something sharp, exhilarating and encouraging about the smell in the air. It was fresh and clean and tantalizingly different from what they knew it would be when the sun came out to drain them of energy.
The wind had died and when the sun did arrive there was no relief. Those men showing signs of distress were pushed aboard the vehicles and they began to edge closer to Zuq. As they did so, an Italian ambulance column came roaring past, heading for the town. Behind came another vehicle, limping badly.
‘The whole British empire fell on us,’ the driver said as he came alongside. ‘They’re still hammering it out. So far we’re holding them but they’re chewing up the armour like a mincing machine.’
As they headed into town, it was decided to commandeer the warehouse where 64 Light Vehicle Repair Unit had first been thought of.
‘We can put everybody inside and post guards outside in Italian uniform,’ Rafferty suggested. ‘It’ll look like a temporary POW compound.’
‘There’s just one point,’ Dampier said. ‘What do we do about food?’
Morton smiled. ‘Scarlatti’s dump’s still here,’ he said. ‘And there’s always Clutterbuck.’
Chapter 8
Zuq seemed strangely empty as they drove in. As usual the civilians had taken their cars and lorries and donkeys and camels and headed into the desert to camp out among the dunes until the fighting they were expecting had finished and they could return. Several Arabs stood by the side of the road as they arrived, but there were few soldiers.
The Italian uniforms they had acquired were prominent as they established themselves in the ruined warehouse once more. Clegg, Jones and Rafferty, clad in the tunics of Italian privates, appeared at the doorway as guards, with Morton strutting up and down behind as their officer. Coffin’s men, their vehicles hidden round the back of the warehouse, preferred to prowl round the town but one or two of the Australians, entering into the spirit of the thing and wearing the tunics of their late custodians, added to the appearance of a well-guarded column of prisoners.
They had barely established themselves when Barbieri vanished. He returned later in his car with Rosalba, who looked as though she didn’t know whether to be frightened or furious. She had locked the Bar Barbieri and spent the three days while Caccia and Barbieri had been away with Teresa Gelucci, whose father had persisted in trying all the time to get her in a corner away from the light. She was overjoyed to have Caccia back, but nevertheless, as soon as she saw him, she went for him with both hands swinging.
‘So!’ she yelled. ‘After two hours of marriage and the grandissima fornicazione, it has succeeded that you didn’t want me!’
‘It’s not true,’ Caccia yelled back. ‘They shoved me in a car and drove off!’
‘But you didn’t fight back, eh, soldato? You wooed me – ravished me as if I were a whore – but you didn’t fight to the death to rescue your Rosalba.’
Watched by grinning Australians offering encouragement, Caccia managed – not without difficulty – to convince her of his good intentions and she finally burst into tears.
‘You are not crossed with me? I thought wrong things about you because I awaited too long.’
Then she saw Morton and promptly went for him instead. ‘Porca miseria!’ she stormed. ‘You do a wrongness! You take away my husband! You leave me to be shot by the Germans!’
‘Oh, you little beaut’.’ McBean grinned. ‘Give it to him, girl!’
Though Barbieri went back to his bar, claiming that he was hoping for a few customers when the British army arrived, Rosalba was clearly determined not to permit Caccia out of her sight again. Still muttering in flashes of angry fire, she allowed herself to accept a pair of khaki drill trousers and a blouse from the Ratbags’ property basket.
Taking a lorry, with Clutterbuck, Caccia and Clegg, Morton headed for the dump. Scarlatti looked nervous and hardly listened as he explained that they’d been taken off repairs and told to feed two hundred-odd prisoners of war.
‘It isn’t my job to feed prisoners!’ There was a mounting hysterical note in Scarlatti’s voice. ‘Faiani’s disappeared and I’ve been warned that there’s a possibility of defeat and that my job will be to destroy the dump.’
‘It’s my job,’ Morton said coldly, ‘to keep the prisoners under control until we can get them away to Europe. If they starve and I’m asked why, I shall tell them that Major Scarlatti, of No. 7 Base Stores and Resupply Depot, refused to provide rations. There’ll be enquiries by the Red Cross at international level.’
Scarlatti threw up his hands and gave in. A shed was opened and cases of rations were handed out. The food they contained was spartan enough but nobody complained.
‘It’s only for a few days,’ Dampier pointed out loudly.
McBean looked at Clegg. ‘Who is that bloody Pom?’ he asked. ‘Wearin’ an Italian private’s uniform and always tellin’ us what to do.’
They tore down a few doors to make fires and as it grew dark they noticed that the noise to the east seemed nearer. The following morning a whole string of ambulances appeared in the streets, heading for the hospital. Scarlatti gave Morton the news.
‘Our army suffers terribly,’ he said, tears in his eyes. ‘An attempt at a counter-attack ended in complete failure and the Germans have refused to help. The British armoured divisions still keep coming and they say the desert’s full of burning vehicles.’
As the battle continued to rage, there were mutinous sounds from the Australians, but then they heard that the Italian army was beginning to crack.
Scarlatti was in a panic. ‘They’re going to make a stand here in Zuq!’ he told Morton. ‘The Ariete Division’s been pulled out of the line and they’re heading for Zuq to throw a defence round the town!’
When Morton passed on the news to Dampier, the old warhorse started smelling battle. ‘They’ve got to take it off us first,’ he said. ‘Possession’s nine points of the law and it seems to be – er – up for grabs.’
‘We’re not exactly over-supplied with weapons,’ Morton pointed out.
‘I can get you summat,’ Clutterbuck said. ‘I’ve still got me pass into the dump and there are ’undreds of British rifles in there what was captured at Mechili. They’re due to go to Derna. I’ve seed ’em.’
To Dampier’s ironbound honest military soul, it went hard to steal arms – even from an Italian dump. ‘There are over two hundred of us,’ he pointed out.
‘Well, two hundred’s a bit of a tall order,’ Clutterbuck admitted. ‘But I ought to be able to get a few.’
Dampier raised no objections. ‘Sergeant Clegg,’ he said. ‘Fit him out with an Italian uniform.’
* * *
When Clutterbuck returned with the lorry after dark, he was grinning all over his face.
‘Only twenty-five,’ he apologized. ‘But about five thousand rounds of ammunition and a Bren. I couldn’t make it no more.’
‘Never mind. Never mind. We already have a few.’ After so long in the wilderness, Dampier was excited to be back into his own as commanding officer of an armed unit. ‘How did you do it?’
Clutterbuck touched his nose. ‘That’s a trade secret, innit.’
* * *
That night Italian Lancia trucks prowled round the town. The Italians, still un
aware of the Australians’ presence and startled to find themselves looking down the muzzles of rifles held by gaunt-looking Antipodeans, could see no other option but quietly to put down what they were doing and march off into captivity. They were thin on the ground now because most of the Italian units had been moved east into the desert and those who were left were largely lines of communications troops. One after the other they were snatched up in shadowed corners and their weapons taken. Doors were flung open and ferocious Australian faces appeared, and the number of prisoners taken at Sofi gradually grew larger and the stock of weapons increased.
The next day had hardly begun when they added two 47 mm guns, two machine-guns and more rifles, and, guided by the enthusiastic Dampier, Rafferty and the Australian NCOs, they were taking up positions in the trees and buildings on either side of the main road running into the town from the south. Dampier might have been pompous, lacking in humour and a bit of a bore, but he knew his job as a soldier. And this was the opportunity he’d been waiting for ever since 1939. Standing in the middle of the road, he directed small groups of men into drainage ditches or to the rooms and flat roofs of the empty houses. It seemed a perfect place for an ambush.
Late in the afternoon, Coffin, who’d been reconnoitring to the south, appeared at full speed in Erwin’s Mercedes, trailing an enormous cloud of yellow dust.
‘They’re on the way!’ he yelled.
‘Who are?’ Dampier yelled back.
‘Looks like a Blackshirt battalion.’
‘Which way are they coming?’
‘Right up your nose,’ Coffin said cheerfully. ‘They should be here in a quarter of an hour.’
* * *
The approaching cloud of dust was spotted within five minutes. Gradually it took the shape of a column of vehicles, mostly open trucks crowded with men, interspersed here and there with light armoured vehicles and led by two motorcyclists and a staff car containing a group of officers. Through the X12s they looked dusty and bedraggled and Morton identified them with ease.
‘They’re not Blackshirts,’ he crowed. ‘They’re the good old Longhi Hares. They won’t give us much trouble.’
The Italians weren’t expecting any opposition. Zuq had been Italian when they’d left and, since it was behind them, they were expecting it to be Italian when they returned. The Australians waited in a vengeful mood.
‘Wait till you see the whites of their eyes,’ Fee ordered. ‘Nobody fires until the word’s given.’
When Dampier gave the word the blast that hit the leading vehicles created chaos at once. The two motorcyclists veered from the road and disappeared into the drainage ditches on either side. The staff car followed, to end up nose-down, its rear wheels spinning, a cloud of steam rising from the engine. The lorries behind it swung aside and stopped dead. An armoured car endeavoured to bring its gun to bear but one of the Australians who had been practising with the 47 mms hit it with his first shot and it burst into flames.
Clegg watched the slaughter, shocked. Up to that moment, he hadn’t seen much of the war because he’d left England before the blitz had started. In Cairo he hadn’t been involved with the desert fighting at all and their adventure behind the Italian lines had been almost a joke. Even the killing at the prisoner-of-war camp at Sofi had been in the dark. This was something new and in the full glare of the sun.
A machine-gun opened up and, his head down, trying to shoot without getting hit himself – something he hadn’t completely worked out how to do – Clegg heard a cry behind him and saw someone reeling away. But there were more bodies in the road now and the Australians further down the hill began to pour in a withering fire from behind the Italian column. Their bullets started to whistle over his head.
‘Comrades and bosom friends,’ he gasped. ‘I reckon the Italians are going to win this battle! They’ll still be around after we’ve all shot each other!’
For a while it seemed he might even be right because the Italians were beginning to take cover under the lorries and fire back. Then a white flag appeared on the end of a pole with such alacrity it seemed almost as if the Italians had had it ready, and the firing died down a little. They were just about to stand up when it started again with renewed vigour and it was then that Clegg saw a Union Jack being waved from the drainage ditch by the side of the road. It was held by Micklethwaite and he looked frightened to death.
‘What’s he doing there?’ Clinch said. ‘The silly bugger’ll get his head blown off.’
The sight of the terrified Micklethwaite almost among the Italians did something to Clegg. Micklethwaite had looked bewildered most of the time he’d been with them and a lot of the time scared stiff, but at that moment he seemed totally lost and, with the ditch behind him crumbling under the fusillade, without thinking Clegg jumped up and started to run. Spurts of dust leapt up from the ground round his feet but he seemed to bear a charmed life. An Italian sergeant rose up in front of him, apparently from nowhere, and Clegg swung the rifle in his hands almost without noticing he held it. As the sergeant spun away, an officer appeared, holding a revolver, but Clegg’s weight sent him with a yell after the sergeant, then he was diving for the ditch and, gathering the petrified Micklethwaite in his arms, he carried him with him until they crashed to the bottom.
Winded, Clegg looked up. Bullets were clipping the dried yellow grass along the lip of the ditch. Micklethwaite’s face appeared from somewhere beneath his right elbow.
‘You all right?’ Clegg asked.
Flattened by Clegg’s fifteen stone, Micklethwaite was unable to do any more than nod speechlessly.
Clegg gave him a shaky grin, as usual unable to resist a joke. ‘Dead,’ he said. ‘And never called me mother.’
Somehow the dash he’d made had shaken the Italians and, as they hesitated, Sergeant Grady and one of the LRDGs ran along the column and began to toss grenades under the vehicles. Two of them went up in flames at once and there were screams. Then the white flag reappeared. More followed and Italians began to jump from the trucks, their hands in the air, shouting for mercy.
‘Sono prigionieri! Ci arrendiamo! Tedeschi no boni! Evviva Inghilterra!’
The Australians appeared warily from behind their walls and trees and out of the ditches and began to stalk forward. They were gaunt, their faces ugly with dislike. As they reached Micklethwaite, Fee snatched the flag off him. ‘Bloody sauce,’ he said. ‘Pinchin’ my flag.’
Rafferty appeared and pulled Micklethwaite to his feet. Clegg looked up to see Morton staring down at him.
‘You okay?’
‘Cured and ready to be killed again, old mate.’
‘I think you stopped the battle,’ Morton said. ‘They’d never seen anything as big as you before. They probably thought it was King Kong.’ He turned to the newspaperman. ‘What in God’s name were you doing there?’
‘I was trying to reach the Australians,’ Micklethwaite explained. ‘I thought the flag would stop me being shot.’
‘They’d shoot all the harder with that in your hand.’
‘I wasn’t thinking of the Italians. I was thinking of you lot.’
Rafferty’s eyes were dancing with merriment. ‘You had ’em surrounded, boy,’ he said.
They began to laugh, a little hysterically now that it was all over, because Micklethwaite was the last person in the world from whom they’d expected anything brave or unusual. Staring at the Italians, Dampier listened proudly as Rafferty reported. He was wearing his British uniform and cap again, his 1914–18 medal ribbons bright on his chest and a glow in his eye as if he’d thoroughly enjoyed himself.
One of the prisoners, a Libyan conscript, approached. ‘Why don’t they let me go?’ he asked Morton. ‘I’m not Italian.’
‘What’s he say?’ Dampier asked.
‘He says he doesn’t like it here.’
‘Tell him neither do we.’
Morton did so and the Libyan looked at him with puzzled eyes. ‘Then why don’t we all go home?’ he aske
d.
To Clegg it seemed a splendid idea.
Chapter 9
By late evening they knew there would be no more resistance. The Arabs, inevitably the first to return, scented loot and came out of their shanties on the edge of the town and started going through any empty buildings they could find. Shops, offices and homes were broken open and their furniture and other contents strewn across the road. The Arabs had never had much love for the Italians who had stolen their land and were anxious to pay off old scores. Outside the house that Brigadier Marziale had occupied, a house that was gracious in the Spanish style with a cobbled courtyard and palms, lay everything it had contained, food, clothing, pictures, crockery, even doors and windows.
A few mules and an occasional dog sniffed about in search of food and water and a few of the Australians, farmers by instinct, were rounding them up and taking them to compounds to be fed. Arabs, on donkeys, on camels, even on bicycles, impeded by the loot they were carrying, were heading for the anonymity of the desert. As they went, shattered Italian units began to arrive, the soldiers gathering in groups, offering no resistance. The Germans, they said bitterly, were retiring westwards with all their vehicles and, sick of Mussolini’s boasts, sick of his guerra di povera – the war of the poor people – they had had enough. There were so many anxious to surrender, nobody bothered to round them up, leaving them alone with their misery, disillusioned men with gaunt, unshaven faces throwing away their equipment, clothing and weapons as they came.
They limped in, clutching cardboard suitcases, the toes cut from their dreadful boots, the rotten thread broken in the seams of their uniforms, to gather in little knots, shouting to each other – ‘Bruno!’ ‘Antonio!’ ‘Acqua, per favore, acqua!’ – and offering swigs of wine in exchange for cigarettes.
One group had started a fire by the roadside and were bringing out from the houses the obligatory pictures of Mussolini as fuel, but mostly they huddled together with hunched shoulders and stony faces. Among them was Scarlatti, brought in with his staff by Morton himself. He had been making a half-hearted attempt to destroy his dump but had obviously been hoping that a lack of success might put him in a better light with any British captors he might have to face. Guiltily aware of the fiddling he’d done, he assumed at first that Morton was part of the Italian field police and had been spying on him all along, and was convinced he was about to be shot. When he learned the truth, his large sad eyes gave Morton a reproachful look as he handed over his sword and the photograph of Caccia’s wedding.
