A Good Clean Fight

by Derek Robinson

  “She won’t go over any palms,” the pilot said. “They’re much too high for her.”

  Schramm looked out and saw the odd palm tree, its fist of leaves well above their heads. The corner of his eye caught the flicker of tracer, as hot as neon. “I know you can’t climb,” he said, “but can’t you go faster?” He could see there was plenty of throttle waiting to be used.

  “Faster is slower. Watch.” The pilot opened the throttle a fraction. At once the speed increased but the nose went down. He closed the throttle by the same fraction and the nose came up again. “Slower is faster. Know why? Fly slow and there’s not much airflow over the elevators. We stay up. Fly faster, more airflow for the elevators to bite on, so they send us down. It’s a balancing act.”

  “They’ll catch us if you don’t go faster.”

  “They’ll catch us if we do. Catch us with our nose in the sand.”

  Lampard braced himself to fire another burst and as he squeezed the triggers the jeep cornered so sharply that he got swung sideways, lost his footing and shot the sky instead. “God’s bowels!” he shouted. When the jeep straightened, he looked to see what the driver had avoided. The sand was brown in places, so brown it was almost chestnut, but tinged white. “Salt marsh?” he said. The driver nodded, too busy searching the land ahead to speak. Lampard looked for the Storch, no longer dead ahead, then looked for the rest of the patrol, strung out behind, and he made his decision. “Stop!” he said. “This is no damn good.”

  The jeep turned and cruised back, skirting the long patch of salt marsh. Dunn’s truck saw them coming and waited.

  “Nasty bit of bog,” Lampard said. “By the time we found a way around it, we’d have been too late.”

  “Pity,” Dunn said. “You were gaining on him, too.”

  “I was indeed. How far away d’you reckon those palms are?”

  “Which palms? I can see about five thousand.” The skyline to the north and west was black with trees. Some seemed to float on lakes of light.

  “Two miles at most.” Lampard answered his own question. “More to the point, where’s Jalo garrison? It could be on the other side.”

  “Don’t know,” Dunn said. “Doesn’t matter, does it?”

  “Correct. Doesn’t matter a toss. Not a tiny toss.” They looked at each other and laughed with the suddenness of broken tension. The chase was over, Jerry had won, it was all a joke. Jolly funny joke. Davis’s jeep and Waterman’s wireless truck arrived while they were still laughing. Corporal Pocock was sitting on top of the truck. “Captain!” Pocock shouted. “That sodding Storch is down again.”

  Lampard scrambled up beside him. Far off, beyond a patch of scrub, half a wing could be seen sticking out. The ground where the plane had landed fell away in a slight depression and this had hidden it from view unless you were Pocock, up high. “Brilliant!” Lampard said, and jumped down.

  He couldn’t wait for the Alfa. He called the rest of the patrol around him for orders. “Stroke of luck,” he said. “Whatever’s wrong with that shufti-kite is getting worse. I shall go back in the jeep and try to find a way around the salt marsh. Mike, you follow. The rest wait here. Any questions?”

  Sergeant Davis said: “There’s Eye-ties in those trees, you know.”

  “What makes you think so?”

  “Flies.” Davis waved an arm through the buzzing black aura. “Smell the garlic on their breath.” He was not happy.

  “Why hasn’t someone come out to help those idiots in the plane?”

  “Dunno.”

  Lampard looked through his binoculars at the stretch of palms, but it was only a gesture, and they all knew it. “It’ll take us three minutes, maximum,” he said. “I’ve never known an Italian who could put his pants on in less than three minutes.”

  Gibbon arrived in the Alfa as Lampard and Dunn left. “What’s the score?” he asked; and when Waterman explained, Gibbon merely sniffed. “Not impressed?” Waterman said.

  “We should be on the trail, not on the spree.”

  “It’s only three minutes, Corky.”

  “What if it takes longer?”

  “Then we’ve got time for a brew-up.”

  Gibbon turned away and tried to find some shade. Waterman climbed onto his wireless truck and settled down to watch the attack. Trooper Smedley sat beside him. “If you ask me, this is plain bloody silly,” Smedley said.

  “Ours not to reason why.”

  “First we go to all that trouble to try to sneak through the Gap, then we go chasing butterflies till we’re nearly in Jalo. What’s so special?”

  “You know what he’s like when he gets his teeth into something,” Waterman said. “British bulldog.”

  “I had a mate had a bulldog,” Smedley said. “Ugly as sin. Dog wasn’t much to look at, neither.”

  Schramm leaned forward and tried to see what the pilot was doing to the engine. Waste of time asking: he got no answer except metallic clinks and thumps that made the plane shiver. All he could see were hunched shoulders, moving as if the arms were using a spanner. The stink of petrol was so strong that it shimmered.

  “Go and get some soldiers from the garrison,” Schramm shouted, but it came out as a weak shout. “They can tow us in.”

  No reply. Schramm gave up. He was an Intelligence Officer; he was not trained for combat, he was trained to use his brains to help others succeed in combat. The last forty-eight hours had proved what he already knew: combat was a young man’s game. He rested his head against the baking-hot leather of the seat and thought of cold steins of beer until he could almost feel and taste the wonderful stuff and he had to swallow in order to meet the illusion; but he had no spare saliva and the swallow was a failure. The pilot, looking pleased, climbed into the cockpit. “Problem solved,” he said. “I have emptied half the Sahara out of the bowels of this poor old cow. Now she’ll sing like a bird.”

  “And fly like a bird?”

  “No, she’ll fly like a grand piano, but even a grand piano can fly if you lash enough power to it.”

  The engine fired willingly enough; after that it coughed and roared alternately. The pilot knew he had to cut and run before it overheated. He ran, trying to taxi between or around the stones, some as big as melons, that dotted the ground. Three times out of four he missed them. Fourth time, the plane rocked and the wheels suffered. There were also palm trees and patches of scrub to avoid. He leaned far forward until his nose almost touched the windscreen. The rudder never ceased wagging.

  Lampard’s driver had found a track. It wasn’t much of a track, but it was definitely not salt marsh and it seemed to lead somewhere near where the Storch had been last seen. Lampard told him to get a move on, and the jeep hammered along at a good twenty-five miles an hour. It felt like seventy. Behind, the armed truck charged into the jeep’s dust with blind faith.

  Waterman watched the progress of the interception through binoculars from the top of his wireless truck. It had the inevitability of gradualness: the jeep was traveling at more than twice the speed of the Storch; the gap between them closed like slowly shrinking elastic; you could plan the point of meeting. That point was never reached. When the range was still two hundred yards, the jeep slowed, the truck came alongside it, and both began firing.

  As if these shots were starting signals, four armored cars charged out of the oasis in line abreast and sped toward the attack. They were less than half a mile away. Very soon they too were firing, brief ranging shots of heavy cannon laced with tracer. The shots fell close and kicked up sand. Immediately the armed truck was reversing at speed up the track, its gearbox screaming, its driver searching fur a turning place. Lampard fired a second, longer burst at the zigzagging Storch. Then his driver spun the jeep round and chased the truck.

  The Storch kept going. Schramm had felt bullets whacking into it and he had heard them fizzing past. He was helpless, just as liable to be killed if he jumped out as if he stayed inside. The pilot was cursing the airplane, the British and the desert,
and his face was screwed into a vast grimace that anticipated each crash of wheel against rock. The engine kept cutting out for an instant and then picking up with a harsh and painful roar, as if it had to take breath each time. Like a bullfight, Schramm thought, it’s like a wounded bull. He told himself not to waste time on fantasies. So what else could he do? Tighten your seat belt! Get your head down! He did both those things. Fatuous, he told himself. Futile. There was more firing. The pilot sighed. The Storch seemed to trip. It fell on its nose and smashed its propeller: Schramm clearly saw some of the bits spinning away and bouncing off a red rock. The tail kept coming up until Schramm was hanging in his straps, looking down at a boiling cloud of dust and dirt. The door beside him sagged open, a clear invitation. He punched the release button on his straps, fell helplessly and lay with his face in the sand, moaning. Nobody responded. “Oh, Christ, that hurt,” he said weakly. No answer. If it hadn’t been for the flies, everything would have been very quiet. Ten thousand flies. All sopranos. How odd. “They can fly,” Schramm told the pilot. “Why can’t you?” He examined the flies and saw instead a remarkably regular pattern of black specks, thousands of black specks. The noise was inside his head. “No flies,” he said weakly.

  Lampard heard the pounding of the Bofors gun, solid and steady as a bass drum, before he saw the armed truck through the cloud of dust it had thrown up as it reversed. Dunn’s driver had found a half-circle of rocks, probably an old goat-pen, enough to give the truck some protection, and before Dunn could jump down from the cab his crew had the Bofors in action, pumping 37 mm shells at the Italian armored cars. By the time Lampard’s jeep stopped in the lee of the truck, the Breda 20 mm was firing alongside the Bofors. The clatter and bang were deafening. Lampard grabbed Dunn by the arm. They ran clear of the dust and the noise.

  “Three,” said Lampard. “I can see three. There were four. Where’s the other gone?”

  “Maybe it went back,” Dunn said. “For God’s sake, let’s get down.” The three armored cars were at the extreme limit of the Italians’ range, but spent rounds were plopping into the sand and Dunn felt conspicuous.

  “Why should it go back?” Lampard was searching the scene through binoculars. “Makes no sense. Tell you what makes sense. Outflanking makes sense. Those three keep us busy while number four sneaks round behind us and duffs us up.”

  “That’s all salt marsh,” Dunn said, waving toward the left. “So he can’t get through there, can he?”

  Abruptly all firing ceased. The armored cars had pulled back. For a while both sides stood and looked at each other through air that twitched and shivered and baked.

  “Let’s get out of here,” Dunn said. “What are we waiting for?”

  “What are they waiting for?”

  “The heavy brigade. Stukas. Who knows? Tanks. Artillery.”

  Lampard made one last search through his field glasses, knowing that every second was risky and enjoying every second of risk. “All right, let’s go,” he said, but he took a final look at the wrecked Storch. Nose down and tail high, it made a silhouette like an English market cross. Someone tumbled from the cockpit and fell out of sight. Dead or alive? Probably alive. Less than totally satisfying, that. Pity the kite hadn’t burned. Nothing beats a nice pillar of flame. His jeep came by and he swung into the front seat.

  Dunn was relieved when the three armored cars made no attempt to follow. He guessed that the sudden presence of a Bofors on an ordinary-looking truck had alarmed and discouraged them. Now the only danger lay in covering the next five or six miles of patchy going before the Italians could whistle up an air strike; after that it was all hard, flat desert where you could really put your foot down and sprint for home. A dull thudding pounded the air. At first Dunn thought it was a flat tire beating itself to bits, but the truck ran smoothly. More thudding sounded, then a pause, then a long and gloomy crump. “Jesus!” he said.

  His driver pointed. “Wireless truck,” he said. Black smoke, rich as oil, was gushing into the sky.

  A fold in the land hid the truck from view: the same fold that, earlier, had concealed the Storch from Lampard’s jeep. Dunn knew his driver was right. Only the wireless truck could have burned like that. Now they knew where the fourth armored car had gone, although how it got there was a mystery. The armed truck rounded the salt marsh and they saw more of the burning vehicle. It was gripped by vivid red flames that jumped and swayed like dancers, all wrong for the desert, far too lively; nothing should be so wildly active in such stifling heat. Another crump shook the wireless truck, or perhaps that was just the shuddering of the afternoon air. Fresh smoke boiled up, thrusting the old smoke higher.

  Lampard’s jeep got there first. He stopped for ten seconds to check out the area, seeking any trace of the enemy. Then he made a fast circuit of the burning truck. Two men came out of a patch of waist-high scrub. They were Corporal Pocock and Trooper Smedley.

  “Where’s the Alfa?” Lampard demanded. “Where’s Davis?”

  “Gone.” Pocock pointed eastward. “And bloody lucky to do it.”

  “Anyone hurt?”

  “Mr. Waterman’s in there.” Pocock looked at the wireless truck. Only its shell was left, looking curiously frail through the flames. As the wheels burned out, the chassis settled, like an animal making itself comfortable.

  “Jump in,” Lampard said. Dunn’s truck had arrived. “Time to beat it for home, I think.” He got out and went over to Dunn. “Looks like Tony got the chop,” he said.

  Dunn was beyond caring. All he knew was that he was sitting next to the biggest smoke signal in Libya. “Too bad,” he said. When Lampard remained looking at him, he added: “Could have been you or me, I suppose.”

  “More likely you or I.”

  Dunn stared. “Come again?”

  “You or I, not you or me. Verb to be takes the nominative, not the accusative.” Lampard nodded in approval of himself.

  “Drive on!” Dunn said loudly. Death he could take. Death and grammar, no.

  If he had used his brains, Schramm would have crawled into the shade of the Storch’s wide wings and waited to be rescued. Instead, he got to his heavily bandaged feet and tried to walk to the headquarters of Jalo garrison in order to tell them to radio Barce airfield. It would be a simple message, merely informing Hoffmann where to find (and destroy) the British patrol, and so Schramm thought it must be a simple walk. That wasn’t sensible, but Schramm was sick and tired of acting sensibly. He had acted sensibly when he got captured, and when he escaped, and when he walked across the Jebel, and when he acquired the Storch; and look what acting sensibly had got him: an escort of flies. He stumbled bravely in the wrong direction. When he reached a palm tree he clung to it and had a rest before aiming for the next palm tree. He had no hat. He walked with his mouth wide open, wheezing the superheated air over his bone-dry tongue.

  When the Italian armored cars were sure the British patrol had gone, they checked out the Storch and extracted the body of the pilot. Someone noticed blurred footprints and quite quickly the Italians found Schramm, who had almost completed a full circle.

  At Jalo hospital the doctor didn’t even try to understand his croaking and grunting. When Schramm had sipped a little milk, some of his voice returned, but his Italian was jumbled and the doctor knew little German. Schramm kept getting out of bed and trying to use the telephone. Eventually the doctor gave him a swift injection when he wasn’t looking and Schramm fell peacefully asleep, which gave the doctor a chance to examine his feet. Schramm’s feet greatly impressed the doctor.

  Lampard and Dunn raced back along their own tracks and found the Alfa and the other jeep waiting at the point where the patrol had turned off to hunt the Storch. There was no pause, no discussion. Lampard waved at Gibbon, pointed south, and the patrol began the long sprint across the serir to Kufra.

  Serir was the best going in the Sahara. It was a fine, smooth, gravel plain and it stretched without bump or blemish from horizon to horizon. It was so good that you
could almost take your hands off the wheel. Unless a mirage appeared there was nothing to see, nothing to look at except the other vehicles barreling across the flat, empty, beautiful landscape. The patrol loved it. Every hour took them another fifty miles from the enemy. The racing air hustled around their bodies and for the first time in many days they were almost cool.

  Near the end of the serir the Alfa began to complain. Its exhaust pumped smoke and the engine developed a painful clatter. A couple of miles later there was a small explosion and the engine dumped its oil on the desert. One of the trucks took the Alfa in tow, but within minutes that truck had a puncture. As soon as they restarted, a jeep stopped. The engine was healthy but the clutch had quit. Lampard looked at the sun. Kufra was still a good hundred miles away, with some sharp rocks and then a nasty little neck of the Sand Sea to be crossed. He glanced at his driver. The man had eyes like a lizard with a hangover. Lampard had been sharing the driving. He knew how the man felt. “We’ll stop here,” Lampard announced.

  Nobody talked much. The cooks got cracking. The patrol was a long way from the enemy, but all the double-Vickers were cleaned just the same. The loads were checked for leaky water tins or jerricans. The fitters peered into engines that were still too hot to touch, or squatted by the tires, looking for tomorrow’s trouble.

  Meanwhile: food.

  Compared with the average soldier in the Western Desert, the men of the SAS ate like kings. Lampard’s patrol lined up for sardines, meatloaf, fried onions, tinned potatoes, pickles, tinned vegetables, tinned peaches, cheese and biscuits. Each man got two pints of tea. There was jam and syrup and, if the patrol commander said so, an issue of rum.

  Lampard looked at his men. Nobody had washed in two weeks. Hair, beards and uniforms were filthy from a blend of desert dust and Jebel dirt and the greases and oils applied to weapons and vehicles, all of it evenly distributed by the action of sweat. The men took their loaded mess tins and moved away and ate the food steadily and blankly, not looking at each other, certainly not looking at the sunset, which was releasing a sudden flood of startlingly lovely colors, greens and pinks and mauves. “Rum,” Lampard said to the cook, who nodded. But even that word failed to turn any other heads.