The Thirty Days War

by John Harris

  ‘Is that correct?’

  ‘It is indeed, sir.’

  Lindley frowned. ‘The advice I was given by–’ He stopped dead and gestured. ‘Are you sure of your facts?’

  ‘I’ve driven through these hills many times, sir.’

  Lindley stared at him questioningly for a moment then he waved his hand. ‘Well, I’ve got to trust someone. Go ahead.’

  Moving cautiously, they picked their way forward, winding from valley bed to valley bed in a long snake of slow-moving vehicles. On their right was a vast lake of dried asphalt like a dead crater of the moon, stretches of greenish water lying like a film over the black pitch. The heat between the hills was fiery and the asphalt bubbled; from time to time they saw black- and white-robed Bedouin watching them in amazement.

  At lunchtime a large black Heinkel appeared. As it circled, two Gladiators flew past it, apparently without even noticing it, and it dropped its bombs in leisurely fashion but with little more damage than swamping the nearest vehicles with showers of earth, sand and small stones. Later on, an aeroplane flashed past wearing French colours on its tail, then four black fighters roared out of nowhere, their guns going in an insane chorus.

  Every weapon in the column burst into flame and the leading lorry came back towards Boumphrey, full of men shouting, chattering and gesticulating. There was a tear in the metal of the cabin roof and a wounded man inside who was rushed back along the column to where the doctors rode in the ambulances.

  During the afternoon they broke free of the sandhills and reached firmer ground to the south of Lake Kubaiyah, then late in the day they caught sight of khaki figures in a sandbagged trench near a bridge that was a picket of the Loyals. As they thundered into the camp, they were greeted with yells of delight. As they halted, Lindley’s car stopped alongside Boumphrey’s and he climbed out.

  ‘Thanks, Boumphrey,’ he said crisply. ‘Until you arrived we were buzzing about like blue-arsed flies in a tripe shop. I’ll be letting your senior officer know what happened.’

  Eleven

  The relief of the relief column had taken place only just in time. Lindley could hardly claim to have relieved Kubaiyah because Kubaiyah had relieved itself. The cantonment looked a wreck, however. There were black scorch marks everywhere where shells had landed, and scattered rubble where buildings had been destroyed. There were also piles of charred metal where aircraft had gone up in flames, and those machines that were left were battered wrecks that no longer looked airworthy.

  And the danger was not yet over, because Heinkel 111s had appeared over the place just after Jenno and Boumphrey had left and done more damage in one raid than the whole Irazhi air force and army had managed to do in a week of sustained effort. From then on there had been daily attacks, but a few more Blenheims and Gladiators had arrived from Egypt and finally two Hurricanes – and a great many German aircraft had been destroyed on the ground. Since then more machines, released by Middle East Command in an attempt to clear up the situation quickly so that everything could be concentrated on the Germans in North Africa, had begun to arrive in trickles, which was just as well because Messerschmitt 109s and 110s were now being reported on Irazhi airfields.

  Imagining that the relief was likely to arrive too late to be of much help, the AVM and Colonel Ballantine had started to plan their next move and were intending to advance on Mandadad. The attack had been proposed for the next morning and, with the arrival of the relief column and a Gurkha battalion by air from Basra, they could see no reason to put it off.

  Lindley hummed and hahed but he could see the advantage of keeping up the momentum. To advance on the capital at once and topple Ghaffer was the obvious strategy and he agreed to the plan and, as senior officer, took over its implementation from Ballantine.

  ‘You’d think they’d give us time to have a fag and a bottle of beer,’ Boumphrey said.

  Jenno smiled. ‘You ought to know, Ratter, old son,’ he said, ‘that once the British have set an operation in motion, they’re never disposed to abandon it, even if the reason for it has long since disappeared. Though there are no longer any heroes to be rescued, there are still villains to be chastised.’

  Boumphrey made a point of going to the hospital with the men who had been injured by the aircraft. Prudence greeted him delightedly.

  ‘Ratter,’ she said softly. ‘Dear Ratter. How lovely to have you back.’

  ‘Not quite back,’ Boumphrey pointed out, briskly because he’d much have preferred simply to clutch her and go on clutching her, drowning his tiredness in the warmth of her flesh and the smell of the perfume she still managed to use. ‘Tomorrow morning we’re going for the capital.’

  Her face fell. Boumphrey seemed thinner than ever, his face was deathly pale, and there were deep purple hollows under his eyes. ‘But you’ve only just arrived,’ she said. ‘Surely they can give you a rest.’

  ‘Not just yet,’ Boumphrey said. ‘Perpetual motion, me and Jenno. But, given a bit of luck, the whole thing will be over in a day or two. Must be off now, old thing. Conference for all concerned officers. I’m one.’ Without thinking, he leaned forward and kissed her on the lips. It was unexpected and she looked startled, then she hurriedly kissed him back. He seemed to come to life and grinned at her delightedly while she looked at him with shining eyes.

  The AVM, with Lindley and Colonel Ballantine alongside him, made things clear as they gathered in the cinema. ‘There can be no delay,’ he said. ‘The Germans are expected to attempt a landing in Crete in the next forty-eight hours. And while there’s every hope of holding on to the place, we’re all aware that there’s a desperate shortage of matériel. At the slightest sign of success there, inevitably the Germans will attack again in the Western Desert, which has already been weakened by the withdrawal of troops for Greece and Crete and now here. It’s up to us to clear up the situation in Irazh as quickly as possible to make the troops here available elsewhere. The C-in-C’s demanded an immediate advance.’

  So that was that. They were in a mess again and everybody had to work like the clappers of hell, get their backs to the wall and do the old greater-love-hath-no-man thing. Considering that the Irazhis were known to have two divisions they could use for the defence of Mandadad, that the Luftwaffe might well intervene in force, and that there was still an undamaged Irazhi brigade at Howeidi to the west which might well attack Kubaiyah while they were away, they were taking a hell of a chance. Especially as Mandadad might well be defended by as many as 20,000 men and they were proposing to attack it with a force of less than 1200, plus a couple of hundred of the Bedou Legion and a few armoured cars and guns, a force in fact about the size of a battalion and a half.

  ‘You know what Foch said in the last show,’ Jenno murmured. ‘“My centre is giving way. My right is in retreat. Situation excellent. I shall attack.” It’s one of those.’

  That night, as they tried to snatch some sleep they could hear aircraft taking off to bomb aerodromes known to be used by Germans – some even in Syria. It was no encouragement to know that the Vichy French were allowing their airfields to be used as a staging post, but there was one cheerful piece of news. A German Luftwaffe colonel, the son of one of Hitler’s field marshals, who had arrived to direct the air operations against them, had had the misfortune as his machine flew low in its approach to Mandadad, to be fired on by irresponsible tribesmen loosing off a few pot shots for the fun of it, so that when the machine had landed the co-ordinator of Axis operations was found to be dead in his seat with a bullet in his head.

  Because of the floods caused by the broken bunds of the river and the wreckage on the road caused by the RAF’s attack on the Irazhi reinforcements, the advance was to be led across the flooded area by the Mounted Legion. The relief column, still trying to get their breath back and bring failing vehicles back to efficiency, were to provide the reserves with a second column to follow in two halves, one by the same route as the main force, the second to head north-eastwards across the desert
to the Mandadad-Turkey railway, where it would turn south on to the road that ran alongside the track into the capital. Threatened on two sides, it was hoped that the officer directing the Irazhi defence would be in a flat spin and not know which attack to resist.

  Already, resourceful civil engineers from Kubaiyah’s Works and Bricks Department were constructing a bridge from commandeered dhows at Sin-ad-Dhubban to enable the pincer aimed at the railway track to cross the river. Craddock’s lorried infantry were to lead the column and Craddock had been given the command – according to Jenno, because Lindley wanted him out of the way. The northern arm of the pincer movement was a lightweight affair and was intended chiefly as a diversion to draw resistance away from the main force advancing by the more direct route.

  ‘Lindley’s not forgiven him for that bloody silly charge of his at Hatbah,’ Jenno said.

  To assist the aircraft, the ground troops were to wear a white patch on their backs while their vehicles were to carry the same shaped patch painted on the bonnet, and the night was made hideous with the curses of men trying in a hurry to sew torn-up RAF sheets to their shirts.

  As the sky began to pale three Heinkel bombers flew over, the black crosses on wings and fuselage clearly visible, and dropped their loads on the hangars. The Hurricanes took off after them but, while they were away, four Messerschmitt 109s appeared and sprayed the cantonment, followed by a mustard-yellow Messerschmitt 110 whose gun shattered the marmalade pot on the breakfast table in the officers’ mess. It was a warning that they needed to finish the job before the Luftwaffe arrived in strength.

  As daylight came, the vehicles containing the Loyals, Verity’s levies and the Gurkhas began to assemble outside the gate. Engines drumming, they picked their way through palm groves past the blackened wreckage of the vehicles destroyed in the RAF attacks. The land was flat and mud-coloured under an open sky where kites were already soaring. By the roadside, an eagle, from God alone knew where, stood heraldic, defiant and quite indifferent to the passing vehicles, on the carcass of a pi-dog. Overhead they could see long strings of wild duck heading from the river area to the broad lagoons where they slept through the day.

  Flat as a plate, the earth seemed to stretch away for ever, vast, desolate and pallid. There were occasional halts in the worst of the flooded areas but, led by Ghadbhbhan, the column picked its way from one patch of high ground to the next. Flocks of coots watched them as they went by.

  Eventually, they reached dry land again and edged their way back to the road. Ahead of them now they could see the early morning sky over Fullajah was full of aeroplanes, the pale oyster colour crossed by rising columns of smoke. Alongside the road lay the charred wreckage of a Blenheim bomber shot down in one of the earlier raids.

  The troops went in almost at once and captured the iron bridge across the river intact as Audaxes dive-bombed the trenches guarding it. The Gurkhas and the Assyrians swept forward, and as Porlock’s 4.5s opened up, they found themselves in possession of the town.

  Many of the Irazhi soldiers had exchanged their uniforms for Arab robes looted from surrounding houses and sniping was taking place. The Gurkhas were rounding up every Arab they saw and hoisting his robes to examine his knees. If they were sunburned, Jenno said, they were considered to belong to a soldier.

  Word came down from Lindley to be prepared to move again in the morning and Boumphrey set off to round up his men. They were making the most of the capture of the town to raid a chicken farm and robed marauders were flitting about the runs among the flying feathers. Squawking fowls kept bursting into the air and every now and then one of the Belles made off with four or five birds hanging upside down from his hand, some of them still flapping hysterically. As Boumphrey bullied them away from their spoil, someone sent British soldiers to guard the farm, but he noticed that before they took up their positions they, too, helped themselves.

  The river was edged by tall reeds standing in water that reflected the vast blue sky. As the wind grew stronger it brought a chorus of strange noises from the reeds – groans, whistles, wails, bleats, croaks and loud flatulent sounds. A flight of pelicans sailed majestically by on stiff wings, and they saw kingfishers in patches of electric blue, chestnut and crimson.

  Boumphrey was just briefing his men for the final advance when whistles went and they heard a sudden burst of firing. Running to their vehicles, their weapons clanking, they moved towards the sound to find that, contrary to expectations, the Irazhis were counterattacking with determination and skill.

  ‘German “technicians” showing ’em how to do it,’ Boumphrey observed.

  There were two light tanks in the attack but one became stuck in a bomb-crater and the other was knocked out by, of all things, a Boyes anti-tank rifle, a despised and outdated weapon which nobody with any sense dared fire. The screams for help brought aircraft from Kubaiyah to drop bombs behind the attack where the Irazhi reserves were trying to move up. As they struggled to hold the attack, a lorry burst out from among the houses and began to advance towards the bridge.

  ‘That looks bloody ominous,’ Jenno said.

  ‘I bet it’s full of explosives,’ Boumphrey agreed. ‘And the chaps in it hope to get into heaven by setting it off on the bridge and going up with it.’

  Fortunately one of the Audaxes spotted the lorry. Whether the pilot realised what it signified or whether it was pure chance they didn’t know, but the bomb stopped the lorry dead and left it rocking on its springs, its canvas cover in ribbons, its windscreen shattered, its crew dead inside. Then, while they were still looking up at the climbing Audax there was a tremendous explosion and the lorry disappeared in a sheet of flame. Mud houses alongside the road vanished in a shower of fragments, palm trees were flattened, and lorry wheels began to whack down in the fields on either side.

  ‘My God,’ Jenno breathed. ‘I bet that carried the poor sods right into the arms of the Prophet.’

  The explosion seemed to knock the stuffing out of the attackers and the firing died away. Soon afterwards the arrival of the British reserves settled the matter and they swept through the town while the Irazhis were still recovering. Pushing through more flood water, they reached the outskirts of Mandadad, only twelve miles from the city centre and Jenno found himself outside a police post.

  It consisted of a quadrangle of yellow-plastered buildings set about with oleanders and the beginnings of a garden. On the walls were painted the markings of British and Irazhi aircraft and there were still prisoners in the cells who promptly exchanged places with the solitary remaining policeman, a stout sweating man wearing a Prussian spiked helmet from the first war. The place had been the headquarters of one of the recently ejected Irazhi battalions and there were all the signs of recent occupation, including a meal on a table and a pair of brand new shorts hanging on a line which one of Jenno’s men took to replace his own ragged pair.

  In one of the rooms was a switchboard and Jenno and Flight Sergeant Madoc leaned over it, Jenno holding the receiver while Madoc worked the switches and twirled the handle. Immediately a voice replied and Jenno almost dropped the receiver. Replacing it hurriedly, he yelled to one of his men to find Boumphrey.

  ‘And tell him to bring Sergeant Major Ghadbhbhan with him,’ he said.

  With Ghadbhbhan holding the receiver, they tried the trick again and this time an agitated voice called in Irazhi, ‘I’ve been trying to raise you for two hours. What’s the matter?’

  As Ghadbhbhan placed his hand over the mouthpiece and explained what he’d heard, Jenno grinned. ‘Tell him the place’s surrounded by the British, that the British have tanks and that they’re already across the floods.’

  Ghadbhbhan made his voice sound excited and frightened, and laid horrified stress on the word bababa – tanks. When it brought immediate consternation at the other end, it was decided not to risk any more for fear of being found out, but Ghadbhbhan went on listening, picking up snatches of conversation. It was clear the Irazhis had no idea the line was connecte
d and they babbled to each other in greater and greater alarm. A patrol was ordered out to find the ‘tanks’ and soon afterwards, to everyone’s delight, it reported back that there were fifty, fifteen already across the floods.

  The line didn’t go dead until late afternoon. One minute frantic orders and explanations were being yelled in Irazhi then the next there was a click and Ghadbhbhan found he was holding a dead instrument in his hand.

  Jenno grinned at Boumphrey. ‘Somebody a bit brighter than the rest’s arrived,’ he said.

  As evening came, they could see two great domes ahead of them glowing in the last of the light, and four tall minarets topped with gold. With the sinking sun touching them with crimson, they looked like flame-tipped torches. It was the Mosque of Holy Kadmaiani in the centre of Mandadad. Alongside it was the Palace of Flowers, the official residence of the ruler, at that moment occupied by Ghaffer al Jesairi, suffering, Boumphrey hoped, from a nasty case of indigestion caused by fright.

  Civil engineers – rushed up from Kubaiyah’s Works and Bricks Department – had collected dhows and planked them in to supplement the iron bridge, and a great gang of labourers was struggling to repair the breached river banks to allow the floods to dry out. One of the engineers brought news of what was happening at Kubaiyah. A complete squadron of Italian fighters had arrived in Mandadad and the RAF had laid on a welcoming party which had destroyed most of them on the ground before they could become operative, and an Audax crew, the observer the indefatigable Darling, had cut the telephone wires to the north by simply flying through them. For another set of wires which had looked too numerous for this treatment and seemed likely to bring up the aircraft with a jerk, they had landed and, while the pilot had climbed on to the main plane with a set of shears, Darling had set off with an axe and chopped down the poles, before swinging the propeller so that they could take off again just as an Irazhi armoured car hove in sight.