A Good Clean Fight

by Derek Robinson

  * * *

  By daybreak the patrol had moved ten miles further south and the vehicles were tucked away in the curve of a winding valley, beneath an overhang of tall limestone cliffs. The shape of the trucks was lost under camouflage nets, spread wide and held down with rocks. Schramm watched while pretending not to watch. He knew that even the most low-flying aircraft would never find them. It was difficult enough to find somebody who wanted to be found in the Jebel.

  The sun rose with its usual abruptness: from gray-green dawn to full daylight in fifteen minutes. Schramm could feel the temperature start to climb, baking the dew-damp out of his clothes. He sat, resting his back against the cliff, and admired the way they worked. Nobody gave orders, each man knew his job. Nobody hurried, but nobody stood and scratched himself and waited to be told what to do. A bit of quiet joking went on, not much. Lampard ducked under the camouflage netting and came out with a jerrican of water, carrying it as lightly as a briefcase. Someone was whistling. Bacon was frying. Schramm thought: They are three hundred kilometers behind our lines and they are at home.

  He awoke when Corporal Pocock shook his shoulder. “Breakfast,” Pocock said. For a second or two, the German was in the wrong world and nothing made sense. Then he remembered, and groaned. “You’ll feel better after a nice mug of tea,” Pocock said. “And Mr. Lampard says you can have one of your boots back.”

  It was the boot with the built-up heel. Schramm put it on and limped after Pocock.

  Breakfast was a lavish fry-up: sausage, bacon, steak, potatoes, beans; all out of tins. There was tea by the pint and tinned apricots. Schramm looked at his loaded mess tin. “No sauerbraten mit knödels? he said. “No rahmschnitzel mit champignons?”

  “You catch us on a poor day, I’m afraid,” Lampard said. “But when we reach Cairo I can promise you lots of egg and chips.”

  “Egg and chips!” Harris said, and his eyelids drooped at the thought. “I’d kill for a plate of egg and chips.” A few men laughed, but only a few; evidently it was an old joke.

  “Tell you what,” Lampard said to Harris. “If our prisoner tries to escape, you kill him and I’ll buy you egg and chips in Cairo for a week.”

  Harris looked at Schramm. Harris had flat gray eyes, as flat as buttons, and they narrowed and widened as he chewed a piece of steak. He swallowed it, sucked his teeth, and said: “You look like a sporting gent. I’ll give you a kilometer start and I bet I kill you inside twenty minutes.” He stabbed a sausage and twirled his fork.

  Schramm ate a fried potato and studied the sergeant as if sizing him up. Then he ate another potato, still looking at him.

  “Not interested?” Harris said. “Don’t blame you.”

  “Oh, it interests me. Not as a piece of sport, because for me war is not sport. I am thinking, what is the possible stake? What do you own that I want to win, maybe?”

  Harris unbuttoned a pocket and took out a very old and dirty rabbit’s-paw. “Lucky charm?” he suggested.

  “If I win it,” Schramm said, “it will not have been lucky, will it?”

  “He’s got you there,” Pocock said.

  “Only bloody time he will get me.”

  There were caves in the cliff, and the men carried their bedrolls into them. Schramm expected to have to lie on the ground, but he found that the back seats of the Alfa had been removed and taken into a cave for him to sleep on. “Most kind,” he said.

  “Our pleasure,” Lampard said. “Tell me: do you think your people are out looking for us?”

  “Yes.” Schramm made a pillow of his tunic. “Hundreds. Thousands.”

  “Jolly good. Where?”

  “Here, naturally. The Jebel.”

  “Why naturally? For all they know we came by submarine. Or we could be hiding out in Benghazi.”

  Schramm covered a yawn with his hand. “If you please . . . Could we discuss this later? I am not so young as you. I tire more rapidly.”

  “My dear major, I do apologize. Shocking manners.” Lampard straightened the car seats and brushed dust from them. “By all means get some rest. You are, after all, our guest. And if there’s anything you need, anything at all . . . um . . . I’m afraid you can’t have it.” He smiled with such charmingly fake regret that Schramm, already drowsy in the growing heat, thought: He wants me to believe we’re all playing a game. All in fun. Beyond Lampard, standing silhouetted in the mouth of the cave, was Corporal Harris. Nothing funny about Harris. Schramm shut his eyes and tried to ignore the squadrons of wheeling, buzzing flies, and very soon succeeded.

  * * *

  By mid-morning the rocks were frying. By midday the air had had all the guts baked out of it. You could breathe it, given that there was nothing else available, as long as you kept it out of your lungs.

  By midafternoon, the blaze of noon was just a cool and enviable memory. By midafternoon, the sun was dumping a massive glut of heat on the Western Desert. The sun had beaten everyone, beaten them to the ground, left them for dead. The sun was, yet again, undisputed champion of the solar system. And then, thank Christ, it relaxed. The heat eased. Men breathed again.

  Schramm had slept, on and off, for most of the day. Now he came out and sat in the shade and watched the patrol get on with the chores of desert life: cooking food and cleaning weapons, refueling the trucks, checking the tires, double-checking the radiators, and a dozen other details. Schramm noticed that the camouflage nets were still in place. And there was a lookout on top of the cliffs.

  Lampard sat beside him and began cleaning his tommy-gun. “I’m awfully sorry we can’t offer you shaving water,” he said.

  “My dear Lampard.” Schramm half-raised a hand to dispel any anxiety.

  “Satisfy my curiosity.” Lampard squinted down the barrel. “Does everyone in Abteilung 5 speak such good English?”

  “I think so.” Schramm rubbed his chin. He quite enjoyed not having to shave. “Each one of us specializes, of course.”

  “Really? What is your specialty?”

  “Central London. The Knightsbridge area. But only as far as Harrods.”

  Lampard cleaned a spring. “Bloody sand . . . You do talk a lot of balls.”

  Schramm took off his right sock. Already there were holes in the heel and toe. He stuffed it in a pocket. “You grew up in Norfolk. Am I right?”

  Lampard stared. “You can tell all that from my voice?”

  “Oh no. Everything is on your file. What more can I remember? Your middle name is . . . wait a moment . . .” He frowned at his bare foot and clenched his toes. “Roger?”

  “Richard.”

  “Richard, yes. And two years ago there was an officer you had a fight with. Hooper. Captain Hooper.”

  “Good God. Any more?”

  “Um . . . Captain Hooper lost.”

  Lampard got on with cleaning his gun. “Where did you learn your English?” he asked.

  “Oh well,” Schramm said. “It is not a military secret. In 1917 your Royal Flying Corps shot me down. I was for a long time a prisoner of war, very boring, the camp had no books in German so I read books in English, hundreds of them. Dickens, all of Dickens, all Thackeray, Trollope, Kipling, Hardy, Stevenson. And some Americans: Mark Twain, O. Henry, Edgar Rice Burroughs. Others, I forget the names. The Tarzan stories I enjoyed the most. No doubt they symbolized escape, and freedom, and so on. Do you like books?”

  Lampard aimed at the sky and tested the trigger action. “I don’t really like anything except fighting . . . After the war?”

  “Here and there. This and that. A little teaching. Tour guide for Americans. Some journalism in London. Reuters man in Berlin.” He watched Lampard empty a magazine and clean the bullets. “I find this strange,” he said. “Why do you use a clumsy gangsters’ weapon when you could use the Sten gun, which is half the size?”

  “It makes me feel like James Cagney. What were you doing in that car?”

  “Listening to Rome radio, on . . .” He tapped his ears.

  “Headphones.”r />
  “Yes, headphones. When I saw you I removed them. But you could see nothing, could you? I think you made a great gamble.”

  “So did you, old chum. One hiccup out of you and my chaps would have put half-a-dozen grenades into that Alfa.”

  “Thus killing you too.”

  Lampard slotted the magazine onto the gun and put the gun inside a dust-proof bag. He did not close the bag. “You don’t think that would stop them, do you?”

  Schramm tried to grip a pebble with his toes, but it was too big. “It seems an excessively violent way to fight a war, that’s all.”

  “Excessive violence is what they enjoy.”

  “Especially Corporal Harris?”

  “Oh no, not Corporal Harris. Corporal Harris is bored with excessive violence. What Corporal Harris enjoys is some really ferocious homicidal thuggery.”

  “And plates of egg and chips.”

  Ten feet above their heads, an empty food tin on a string jerked and rattled against the cliff face. “Aircraft,” Lampard called, “aircraft.” Unhurriedly the men left their jobs and sat in the deep shadow. After a while they heard the thin, lazy buzz of its engine, but the noise came bouncing off the valley walls and only the lookout on top of the cliff knew where the plane was. “Harris has a passion for egg and chips,” Lampard said. “He and Pocock got lost after a raid, decided to walk home, about two hundred miles. Ran out of food, so they found one of those Road Houses you’ve got all along the coastal road. Casa something.”

  “Casa Cantieri.”

  “It was nighttime. They tossed in a couple of grenades and killed everyone except the cooks. Pocock wanted to grab some grub and skedaddle, but Harris made the cooks fry him egg and chips. They were all Italians, by the way. The place looked like a slaughterhouse, blood and guts splashed everywhere. Cooks were terrified, and the odd Italian soldier kept arriving. Harris stood by the door with a meat cleaver and chopped them down as they came in. Pocock wasn’t enjoying this very much, but Harris was in his element, in a quiet sort of way. The cooks, of course, couldn’t think straight and they made a nonsense of the egg and chips, so Harris told them to try again. While they were doing that he chopped a couple more late arrivals. Finally the cooks managed to do him his egg and chips the way he liked them. By now Pocock couldn’t eat anything, so Harris ate his share too. Then they left. I don’t think I’ve done full justice to the occasion, but no doubt your imagination can fill in the gaps.”

  “I have no imagination,” Schramm said. “It surrendered, in the face of overwhelming reality.”

  The tin above them rattled twice. “All clear,” Lampard said. “Your chaps don’t seem to be making much of an effort to find you, do they?”

  Schramm gave a sad smile. “You know what German soldiers are like,” he said. “Slack, lazy, disorganized and irresponsible. I expect they’re still finishing lunch.”

  * * *

  The patrol stood around in a loose circle and ate from their mess tins. It was easier to wave away the flies when you were standing, but the flies never gave up. They too had been waiting all day for this meal. It was rich and rewarding: salmon, ham and tongue, sausages, mixed vegetables, chutney, apricots, cheese. All tinned. The only untinned protein to be eaten was the odd, unwary fly.

  The wireless officer, a young and balding signals lieutenant called Tony Waterman, said: “If it’s not a rude answer, which part of Germany are you from?”

  “Leipzig.”

  “Ah.” Waterman nodded, and kept nodding while he thought about that. He was short and thickset, with a very round face that settled naturally into an expression of placid goodwill. “I saw a bit of Hamburg and Hanover, but oddly enough I never got to Leipzig.”

  “Yes, I know.”

  Waterman smiled his gentle agreement with Schramm’s agreement.

  “What d’you mean, you know?” Gibbon asked. Gibbon was the navigator for the patrol. His beard, under the dust, was as red as oxblood. He squinted suspiciously at Schramm, but then Gibbon squinted at everyone. Too much desert sun.

  “Major Schramm has a file on each of us,” Lampard said. “In fact he has a file on the entire SAS. You haven’t met Captain Gibbon.” He waved his mess tin by way of introduction.

  “How do you do,” Schramm said.

  “Intelligence knows nothing,” Gibbon said. “That’s the first rule of war, the one they don’t teach you in Staff College.”

  “Corky is right,” Schramm said, which amused everyone except Gibbon. “And congratulations on your Military Cross.”

  “See what I mean?” Gibbon said to Dunn.

  “Corky hasn’t got the MC,” Dunn told Schramm.

  “Soon he will.”

  “Really? What for?” Lampard asked.

  Schramm licked a bit of chutney off his upper lip. “I am afraid I am not at liberty to tell you,” he said. Even Gibbon laughed at that. Schramm blinked and smiled. “Sorry,” he said. “Accidental pun.”

  Corporal Harris scuffed his boots and kicked a small stone toward Schramm. “What have you got on me in your files?” he asked.

  “Oh . . .” Schramm thought hard. “I feel sure the records indicate that you are a scholar and a gentleman who would never blow his nose on the tablecloth if he could reach the curtains.” This was said so blandly that it surprised them. Corporal Pocock choked. Everyone else laughed, everyone except Harris. He took a swig of tea, swallowed, took another swig and expertly sprayed it through his teeth. “I don’t think he’s a bleedin’ Jerry at all,” he said to Lampard. “He’s too clever by half. He’s one of ours who’s sold out.”

  “Es war sehr schön. Ich danke Ihnen. Ich muss jetzt gehen,” Schramm said.

  Lampard looked at Dunn. Dunn said: “I believe that was ‘Thank you for having me, I’ve got to go now.’”

  The lookout’s tin rattled. “This must be my bus,” Schramm said. “Shut up!” Lampard snapped. Already the patrol was moving into the deeper shadow of the cliff, trailed by a long streamer of flies. Above their indignant buzz came a distant drone, like a small power-saw in the sky. “Just a Storch,” Dunn said. “Nothing to worry about.” The Storch was a small high-wing plane which the German army used for search or reconnaissance or taxiing generals about the battlefield. It could fly as slowly as an old crow and it could turn inside its own length, but usually it had no guns. Lampard and Dunn settled down on either side of their prisoner and got on with their meal.

  “This is the second visit by an airplane in less than an hour,” Schramm said. “Perhaps you have been . . .” He searched for the word. “. . . rumbled.”

  “I expect he’s seen our tracks,” Lampard said, “but not for the last quarter of a mile because we went back and wiped them out, so now he doesn’t know which wadi we might be in.”

  “In any case,” Dunn said, “he daren’t come down really low to look for us in case he finds us. You saw what we’ve got: three lots of twin-mounted Vickers machine guns. Make a lovely mess of him, they would. Aren’t you going to finish your apricots?”

  “Yes. But the guns aren’t manned.”

  “He doesn’t know that.”

  “How can you be sure?”

  “Look,” Lampard said, “I’m in command here. Now shut up and eat your apricots, or I won’t take you to see General Cunningham in Cairo.”

  “He is in Alexandria,” Schramm said. “And General Auchinleck now commands your Eighth Army.”

  Lampard uttered a cry of exasperation and threw up his hands, losing a boiled potato from his fork. “For God’s sake stop showing off!” he cried.

  “Sorry. I thought you would wish to know.”

  “Now look what you made me do.” Lampard sucked his empty fork. “That spud came fifteen thousand miles, all down the Atlantic, round South Africa, up the Indian Ocean, through the Canal, across miles and miles of burning desert, scorched by day and frozen by night, just to give me strength to fight the horrible Hun, and you’ve gone and ruined it.”

  “If you know so m
uch,” Dunn said, “how come you didn’t know we were going to raid your place last night?”

  Schramm ate his cheese. Lampard reached across him and gave Dunn a congratulatory slap on the leg. “Blindingly obvious,” he said. “Well done, Mike.”

  Nobody spoke for a while. The note of the airplane engine hardened and softened as it turned, invisibly. Dunn flicked a couple of drowning flies from his tea, and drank fast before the mourners could arrive. Lampard yawned and stretched his arms until his ribcage creaked. “Sergeant Davis!” he called.

  “Sir?”

  “Has the lookout had his meal yet?”

  “No, sir.”

  “Send up a replacement. This shufti plane is being a bit of a bore. It’ll be dark in an hour and I want to move pronto.”

  “Sir.”

  Dunn scratched his beard vigorously and examined his fingernails. “What were you listening to, in the car?”

  “Music. Mozart. Reception is better away from the buildings.”

  “My sister plays the piano. She won a prize for playing the Moonlight Sonata. Mozart wrote that, didn’t he?”

  “Beethoven.”

  “Oh, well. Same difference.”

  “The English are not a very musical race,” Schramm said.

  “Dunno about that. We’ve written some damn good songs. ‘Yes We Have No Bananas.’ ‘Roll out the Barrel.’ All that stuff Vera Lynn sings, like ‘There’ll Be Blue Birds over the White Cliffs of Dover.’ And you should see our chaps listening when Lili Marlene gets sung on Radio Belgrade: dead silence, nobody moves. Anyway—”

  “Shut up a minute,” Lampard said.

  The lazy buzz of the Storch had strengthened and deepened. The sound came bouncing off the walls of the wadi, confusing the ear. Then suddenly the plane appeared, gray as a moth, strolling along, ludicrously slowly, trembling in the last of the waves of hot air. It was low, about three hundred feet, and it was exploring the valley where the patrol was hiding. Lampard was unworried. The trucks looked like scrub and the men looked like the rocks they sat among. The pilot was up in the glare of the setting sun, searching for detail in shadow as dark as a cellar. As long as nobody moved nobody would be seen. “Good heavens. That is a British plane,” Schramm said. As Lampard and Dunn shaded their eyes and tried to make out its markings, Schramm heaved himself up with both hands and began running.