A Good Clean Fight

by Derek Robinson

  At last the weapon exhausted itself and he released the trigger. Elsewhere other machine guns ceased their rattling. High overhead, a flare burst, radiantly white, bleaching the ground, and hung on its tiny parachute.

  “Wait here,” Mix said.

  Schramm looked hard and saw nothing, but his vision was still imprinted with blossoms of red and yellow and green.

  He sat on an ammunition box. It was the first time he had consciously tried to kill someone who was not actively trying to kill him. He held out his hands and stretched his fingers. Not a tremor.

  Nerves of steel. Guts of putty, but nerves of steel.

  Mix and his men came back. The men looked pleased. Mix seemed detached, almost remote. “We got them all,” he said. “Four. Want to see?”

  The flare was fading, but a truck had been brought up and its unmasked headlights lit the bodies. They did not look comfortable in death. Limbs and heads were twisted into the kind of wrong and painful attitudes that can be achieved only by severing tendons and shattering bones and chopping ligaments. “Not like the cinema, is it?” Schramm said. “You can’t pay actors to look like that.”

  Mix said nothing.

  Schramm moved closer to the nearest body. He wanted to know if Lampard was here; but this body was too short. Half the man’s face was missing: another truth you didn’t see in war films. Schramm looked elsewhere and noticed the badges on the tattered tunic. “German uniform!” he exclaimed. “That’s damn dangerous. They could have been shot for that.” Mix cleared his throat. “Well, you know what I mean,” Schramm said impatiently. He went to the next body. It lay on its back, wide-eyed and open-mouthed, like a ten-year-old boy who has just seen his first naked lady. “This one isn’t SAS,” Schramm declared. “Too small, too young. I mean, just look.”

  “In my opinion,” Mix said, “none of them is from the enemy. I think they are all deserters. Two German, two Italian. They’ve been living in the Jebel and tonight they came down to see what they could steal.”

  Schramm knew that he was right. “It was all too easy, wasn’t it?” he said flatly. “Far, far too easy.”

  “Well, killing people is easy,” Mix told him. “Any fool can do it. I did it all the time in Russia.”

  Schramm drove himself back to Barce and slept until ten. He showered and shaved, went to his office and slogged through the heap of files that had come in from Tunis and Benghazi. It was weeks since there had been any real fighting on the ground, but the enemy was intensely busy, preparing for the next battle. New squadrons had reached Egypt, with new types of aircraft. Technically, the Luftwaffe was still superior; the enemy still had no fighter to match the performance of the Me 109G. Come to that, the Macchi 200 and 202 could outfly any Hurricane, Tomahawk or Kittyhawk, but the Italians never got enough of them in the air. Italian servicing was diabolical.

  As usual, there was a sheaf of reports about SAS movements. Luftwaffe Intelligence had plenty of informants, both in Cairo and in the desert. The problem lay in deciding what to believe. Schramm disbelieved almost everything, although he looked long and hard at a report that Captain Lampard’s patrol had left Cairo. It might be true. If true, the patrol might be in the Jebel al Akhdar in two or three days (allowing for some delay in receiving the report). But there were already several patrols allegedly operating in the desert—more patrols than actually existed. So this report could be bogus. Or perhaps a decoy. There was a risk of making the airfield defense units jittery with warnings of raiders who never turned up. That was bad for morale; and the SAS had frayed enough German nerves already.

  It was lunchtime. Schramm had not eaten breakfast; in fact he had taken no food since the previous afternoon, except for coffee in the bunker. He felt empty, but not hungry. The Officers’ Mess was a block away, full of hot food and cheerful colleagues. He-put his cap on and glanced at a mirror. It reflected a pair of bleak and deeply distrustful eyes. “Don’t give me that look,” he said aloud. “I’ve never done you any harm, have I?” The eyes did not change.

  He drove to Benghazi.

  It was a slow, sweaty drive: army convoys everywhere; military policemen who ignored his rank and shouted about unexploded bombs and forced him to make detours along potholed lanes; dust; marching troops; security checks; dust, dust, dust. Finally he had to park a long way from the hospital because the streets around it were clogged with ambulances. And when he got to Dr. Grandinetti’s office the door was shut and a bald-headed orderly was sitting in front of it, reading a very old newspaper stained with what looked like very old blood. “Come back tomorrow,” he said before Schramm could speak.

  “I have an appointment.”

  “Not so loud.” The man frowned severely. “All appointments canceled.”

  “Why? What’s wrong?” Fear shocked him wide awake. The orderly was waving him down to quieten him. Schramm grabbed the newspaper and flung it behind him. “If she’s dead I’ll kill you,” he snarled. “Let me in.” His pulse was hammering and he felt faint. He staggered slightly. He was too weak to kill anyone, even himself. The orderly saw him differently. The orderly saw a madman and so he picked up his chair to fend him off. Schramm seized its legs. A feeble struggle began. People came running. The door opened and Dr. Grandinetti appeared, wearing only her slip. “Stop, stop, stop,” she said. “One war at a time.”

  “Thank God,” Schramm said. “I thought—”

  “No, you didn’t. Men never think.” She kissed the orderly on the forehead, took Schramm by the necktie, towed him into her office and kicked the door shut. “Sit down.”

  She took his pulse, stared into his eyes, went away and came back with a stethoscope. While she was leaning over him he found that by tipping his head he could see much of her breasts. “Do you like them?” she asked softly. He was so startled that he could only grunt. The stethoscope slid. “Would you like to touch them?” she asked, smooth as steel.

  “Not at the moment, thank you.” He regretted his refusal as soon as he heard it. “Perhaps some other time,” he added.

  “You’re not completely dead, then. Wash your face.”

  As he was drying himself he saw a folding bed with the sheets thrown back. “Were you asleep?” he asked. “I’m sorry if I woke you.”

  “Don’t concern yourself. I had to get up to open the door. Old joke. Old and tired and not very funny.” She was in her favorite place, on the windowsill that caught the breeze. “You look terrible. What’s wrong?”

  “This war is what’s wrong,” he said without thinking. “I can’t do it. I can’t go on with it.” He sat on the floor and rested against the wall. He was as far from her as he could get. “Waste and suffering and pointless death. I hate it. Can’t eat, can’t sleep. It’s just . . .” He shrugged. “You know.”

  “Not me. I’m involved in more pointless death than you are, and I eat like a horse and sleep like a baby.”

  “That’s different. You clean it up. You don’t inflict it.”

  “Neither do you.”

  “I did once.”

  “Why?”

  “Because he was trying to kill me. And he was half my age and twice as strong, and well armed while I wasn’t armed at all.” Schramm was cracking his knuckles; he tugged too hard and hurt himself. He sat on his hands. “Damn,” he said miserably, “I suppose you might as well know everything.”

  “That would make an interesting change.”

  He did not tell her everything. He told her about his escape from Lampard’s patrol, about running painfully down the wadi until he was too exhausted to go on, about hiding and throwing himself at Corporal Harris’s legs and then jumping up and smacking Harris on the back of the head with a rock. He made his account as objective and unemotional as possible, but he included every relevant detail and by the end his voice was trembling and tears were sabotaging his eyes.

  “So he is dead and you are not,” she said. Sitting on the windowsill, one knee up and one leg hanging down, she looked as relaxed as a tigress in a tre
e. “What next?”

  Schramm blew his nose. “I took his weapons and one of his boots. Also his socks, because his feet were bigger than mine. And I ran like hell.” His voice was firm and steady again: the crisis was over. “Night fell, which helped. Then it was just a long, long walk over the Jebel.”

  The leg that was hanging swung gently, as if blown by the breeze, and her sandal swung by its toe-strap.

  “Now you know,” he said. He felt hugely relieved that he had told her all about the killing of Harris. All the tension had drained out of him. He was pleasantly tired.

  “You sleep badly,” she said. “Poor appetite.” She was watching something happening in the street. “You feel . . . how?”

  “Oh . . . Weary. Depressed. No energy.”

  “Why do you think that is?”

  Schramm didn’t want to think. He had worked hard; now he deserved to rest. She knew he was weary and depressed, yet she kept making him work. Why didn’t she have pity on him? He groaned quietly. She ignored it.

  “I can’t forget the sound that lump of rock made,” he said. “It was a kind of a thick crack, like what you hear when a golf ball gets hit just right . . . It was a terrible noise, horrible, sickening. And I can’t forget the way he fell. One second he was an elite British soldier running like a stag, the next second he was flat on his face, and an instant later he was dead. Stone dead. The whole bloody business goes through my brain again and again. Here he comes, I kill him, here he comes again, I kill him again . . . It never stops. I hate it. Look at me: I’m no soldier. I’m supposed to be intelligent, civilized, all that nonsense, and I’m really prehistoric. Give me a rock and I’ll smash a skull. It disgusts me. Best thing I can do is smash my own skull. I thought I was clever and I’m stupid. Primitive. Brutish. That killing makes me despise myself. I don’t want to go on living with the person who could do that sort of thing. I hate it.”

  At last she turned her head from whatever it was in the street she had been watching. “You’re lying,” she said, quite evenly. “You don’t hate it. You enjoyed it. Killing that man gave you pleasure, great pleasure. That is what you hate to admit. That is why you sleep so badly and eat so little. You tell lies to yourself, but they are not believed.”

  Schramm stumbled to his feet. He knew that his face was stiff with rage, but he could do nothing to change it. “Goodbye,” he said.

  “Come back tomorrow.”

  “Why should I?”

  “I like you,” she said, “and you need me.”

  It was another dreary, sweaty drive back to Barce.

  When he got out of the car, the station commander was standing talking to a tall, thin Italian officer. Hoffmann beckoned Schramm over. “You know Captain di Marco, don’t you? He tells me that something peculiar is happening to Jakowski’s desert force. They’ve split up, and it seems they’re all over the place.”

  “The pictures taken by our photo-reconnaissance aircraft,” said di Marco, “indicate several sections moving in completely different directions.”

  “Maybe they’re chasing several different raiders,” said Schramm. Let Jakowski do what he liked. It was too hot and he was too tired. “Why don’t you ask him?”

  “He won’t break radio silence,” Hoffmann said.

  “Well, that’s up to him, isn’t it?”

  “The desert gives a man only one chance,” said di Marco.

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” Schramm’s manners were coming apart. He didn’t care.

  “Has Major Jakowski led an expedition into the Sahara before?” di Marco asked. “Has he any men with him who are experienced in long-range desert travel?”

  “Don’t know. Probably not. He reckoned that if the British soldier can do it, so can the German.”

  “Leadership and determination,” Hoffmann said. “Guts and discipline. That’s all it takes. So Jakowski said.”

  “And forty trucks,” Schramm added. “Including a mobile bakery.”

  “It sounds like a head-on assault on the desert,” di Marco said.

  “That’s how Jakowski operates,” Hoffmann told him.

  “My money is on the desert,” di Marco said. He shook hands, and they watched him walk away.

  “He’s very full of himself,” Schramm said, “considering what the Italians haven’t done to help Jakowski.”

  “Well, di Marco knows what he’s talking about. He made a lot of expeditions into the Sahara before the war. On camels, in cars, by plane. He’s got a pilot’s license, you know.”

  “Oh!” Schramm said. “I just realized. He’s that di Marco. Good God. The big explorer. Well, I’m damned. Why didn’t he go with Jakowski?”

  “Why didn’t Jakowski ask him?”

  Schramm gave it five seconds’ thought. “Because Jakowski wants all the credit. Jakowski knows best, and what he doesn’t know he believes he can find out without anybody else’s help.”

  “That’s what he’s doing,” Hoffmann said, “dashing off in four directions at once . . . I hear you were in the thick of the action yourself last night.”

  “I was very brave,” Schramm said. “Hitler would have been proud of me.”

  * * *

  Some time during the night the bass saxophone quit and a pair of flutes took over. They blew sad, breathy, wandering notes which hunted each other and never came together.

  There were nine Arabs in the cave: two women, an old man and six children. During a rare moment when all the pain had left him, Greek George counted them. Later the pain came back and he couldn’t even count his own fingers.

  All the Arabs were quite small, as brown as walnuts, poorly dressed and very serious. If he smiled, they smiled back; but that was simple courtesy and their smiles quickly vanished.

  Later still, when the pain had again drifted away, he wondered if they knew which side he was on. Maybe they thought he was a German. Somewhere sewn into his uniform were five gold sovereigns. Surely they must recognize a British sovereign. He moved an arm to search and ripped the scab of blood that glued his shirt to his damaged ribs. Pain raged. He lay still and tried to pretend it was happening to another person. That worked. He knew it worked because he could hear the other person sobbing.

  Before all this, or after it, or both, the Arabs gave him liquid to drink, heavy bowls of stuff which foamed and smelled rancid. That was encouraging: at least his nose still worked. It looked like sweaty cheese and old piss, mixed up to a froth, but he drank it. One of the girls held the bowl to his lips. She was about twelve. She had high cheekbones and clean sweet lips and he fell in love with her. It must be camel’s milk. His mouth loathed it, but his body was grateful. He wanted to thank her. “Eff-hah-rees-toh,” he whispered. She smiled. George couldn’t believe his amazing good luck. He had been rescued by Arabs who understood Greek. Now nothing was impossible.

  One thing was impossible for Butcher Bailey and that was to stretch his legs.

  He had been inside his cockpit for over twenty-four hours, with only one brief excursion to empty his bladder and to grab the emergency food from its container near the tail unit. He shoved it inside his shirt, turned to lean into the howling wind, lost his footing and got blown over. In the end he crawled as far as a wing and dragged himself back into the cockpit. Dust had piled up on everything: the floor, the seat, the compass, the gunsight, everything. It took all his strength to ram the canopy home.

  After that there was nothing to do but eat as little as possible, wait for the dust-storm to end, and try to find a comfortable position for his body. Butcher had long legs. The Tomahawk cockpit was not made to live in. Wherever he put his feet, eventually it gave his legs cramp. Meanwhile the storm whined and wailed and rocked the airplane.

  There was an easy way to guess the height of a dust-storm. The higher the cloud, the lower the temperature on the ground. This was because the sun could not penetrate the dust. Butcher reckoned the temperature in his cockpit was thirty or forty degrees Fahrenheit below normal.

  * * *r />
  The sky was clear over the Calanscio Sand Sea. Its early morning periwinkle blue had been slowly baked to a milky white that was painful to the eyes. Down between the dunes the air was so saturated with heat that the sands seemed to swim. There was a pleasant little breeze off the Sahara, but none of Jakowski’s men felt it because it blew from west to east while the valleys of the dunes ran from north to south. Looking up at the crest line, they sometimes saw feathers of sand being blown like snow. The only breeze they felt came from the movement of vehicles. Force A was making good time along the valley. Unfortunately it was not making good progress.

  The wireless intercept had placed the enemy raiders to the east, deep inside the Calanscio. Late the previous night, the radio truck had picked up another signal from Benghazi. Reception was poor, but the message seemed to give a new location for the raiders, and it seemed to indicate that they were moving north. The radio operator could not be absolutely sure. Important parts of the message had been distorted beyond understanding.

  If the enemy was moving north, Force A was traveling parallel with him. Lieutenant Schneeberger was searching for a gap in the dunes that would give access to the next valley, where he hoped to find another gap, and so on eastward. The only alternative was to climb up the side of this valley, drop down into the next, and then repeat that process over and over again, which was plainly impossible. These dunes were steep. Some rose to five hundred feet. How could anyone drive up such mountains of sand?

  Schneeberger found a split in the lines of dunes. It was a dead end. His vehicles turned and trailed back to the main valley. A couple of miles further on, another split appeared. This time Jakowski sent Schneeberger to explore it alone, while everyone else sat and stared at the great bleached billows that soared in silence on either side. After twenty minutes Schneeberger’s truck reappeared, not from the direction in which he had gone, but dead ahead, in the same valley. The split had rejoined it.