A Good Clean Fight

by Derek Robinson

  Pip Patterson knew everything was wrong, long before Barton spoke. No flak. No tracer. No movement on the ground. Bir Dagnish was empty.

  “Do not bomb,” Barton said. “Do not bomb. Shit and corruption! Stay with me. We’ll scrounge something.”

  They leveled out at four hundred feet above the hills, belting north, three hundred and fifty on the clock, black smoke streaming from the exhaust stubs. It was strange to fly over trees and bushes, fields, herds of sheep and goats. Hick even saw birds.

  Barton flew with one eye on the Jebel while he read the map strapped to his thigh with the other.

  The nearest Luftwaffe fields were on the coast. Apol-lonia, Cirene, El Qubba, Derna, many more. Barton didn’t want to go near any of them. The 109 leader must have alerted their defenses. The flak batteries would be waiting to pump their filth all over the sky. But Barton hated to jettison and run home.

  The problem solved itself. A road came at them, twisting and curling, a big wide road, a tribute to Italian engineering, and thick with trucks. Barton whooped: the Martuba Bypass! Then it was behind them. He broke hard right and curled left in a wide turn that reversed their course. “Line astern,” he said. “We’ll clobber this convoy.”

  No need to worry about bomb-skip. Each bomb could skip all it liked: it still ended up on or near a target. Kit Carson, flying last in the line, saw trucks getting blown off the road, exposing their undersides in a curious slow-motion. Trucks charged into ditches and overturned. Trucks burned furiously. Trucks collapsed and skidded broadside into other trucks. It was like a monstrous mechanical temper-tantrum. Kit dropped his bombs and climbed to escape their shock waves.

  Scramble klaxons must be blaring on nearby Luftwaffe fields: Barton had no doubt of that. On the other hand it was difficult to track low-flying intruders over the Jebel. The hills fogged the German radar screens with permanent echoes, and the wadis offered escape routes in various directions. Barton guessed that the defense would expect him to take the shortest way out by flying north, over the Med, where there was no flak and he could wheel right and eventually swing back, behind the Allied lines. He planned to fox them by flying south and going out the same way he came in.

  Barton guessed wrong.

  The Kittyhawks were attacked as soon as they reached the desert. Four 109s came in on the left flank, firing from such a ridiculous range that Patterson knew the pilots were inexperienced. Their tracer fell away, wasted, as Barton hauled his formation squarely around to face them. Turn and face, turn and face: everyone had told Hick to turn and face an attack. They couldn’t prepare him for the startling speed of the interception that followed. The 109s flashed past while he was still trying to get his guns on a target. All he could remember was a blur of wings and cockpits and spirals of smoke left by bullets. “Stick with me, Hornet Two,” Barton said. Hick was grateful to follow his leader and guard his tail. That, at least, was simple.

  For a while, both formations circled and climbed, winding themselves up to three or four thousand feet. Barton knew the 109s wanted height for their standard attack of dive, hit and run. He wanted height because he reckoned a dive would give the Kittyhawks the lead in the marathon sprint back to LG 250. The 109s would give chase, but a long pursuit deep into the desert would soon discourage them. The 109 was not at its best at ground level. At least that was what he hoped. His earphones filled with the roar of somebody else’s cockpit noise. It was Kit Carson. “I’m in the shit, Fanny,” he said. “The engine’s overheating. The oil gauge is in the red. Christ, I can smell it!”

  “Throttle back, throttle back,” Barton told him; but Kit had already taken so much power off the engine that it was soon waffling along, at little above a stall. The 109s noticed and edged closer. “Can you land?” Barton asked.

  “Will they let me?” Kit asked, and laughed. Bloody silly question. Dark smoke was streaming back from the engine.

  “Try to land. We’ll scare them away.” But the enemy had seen their advantage and were making an attack. For a few seconds the sky was a flurry of twisting, chasing fighters around the one that slid as helplessly as a glider. Most of the 109s missed. One hit. Kit’s tailplane was shredded. The Kittyhawk wallowed and skidded drunkenly. “That’s it!” Kit shouted. “I’m baling out!”

  “Stay near the wreck,” Barton ordered. “We’ll come back and get you.”

  Kit had never baled out before. He wanted now to do it fast, before the 109s returned and killed him. He released the canopy; it whirled away and bounced off the shattered rudder. The Kittyhawk hated that and threatened to stall. For an instant he panicked. But the Kitty recovered, and he did what he had done countless times. He raced through the ritual of the pilot who lands and gets out: a sequence as automatic and unthinking as unbuttoning his shirt. He unplugged the radio lead and he snapped out the oxygen tube. As one hand released the cockpit-straps, the other hand gave the parachute-harness buckle a quarter-turn clockwise and whacked it against his stomach. The four straps popped out. The Kittyhawk skidded and flung him sideways. Nothing held him secure: he felt naked. He knew what he had done and he shouted his despair. He snatched at the vanishing straps, hoping to shove their ends back in the buckle. Both leg-straps fell to the floor. As he groped for them he felt the shoulder-straps slide down his back, and this time he screamed at the stupidity of it all. The Kittyhawk lurched and he grabbed the rip cord for no reason at all except it was the only bit of parachute left to grab. Then the aircraft rolled and out he went, snatching at the cord, hoping for a miracle. The silk streamed and blossomed with a soft bang. Kit Carson dropped away from it, still holding the metal ring.

  It was four thousand feet to the desert. The empty parachute took more than twenty minutes to wander and drift all the way down. It spread itself a few hundred yards from Kit Carson. Three miles away, the wreck of his Kittyhawk was burning. More than a hundred miles away, Barton, Patterson and Hooper were coming in to land.

  Barton told Skull what had happened: the good, the bad, and the inexplicably horrible. “At least we got the Luftwaffe off its backside,” he said.

  “I’ll tell Wing,” Skull said heavily. “Wing will tell Group, Group will tell HQ, and HQ will tell the whispering grass but the whispering grass won’t tell the breeze ’cos the breeze don’t need to know. Have I missed anything?”

  “Was that meant to be a joke?” Patterson asked. His goggles had scored great rings around his eyes. They made him look fevered.

  “I liked Kit,” Skull said. “Kit was a good type.”

  “Yes,” Barton said. “Got something tasty for supper?”

  Supper was bully-beef stew. Afterward Skull went off to his tent and wound the portable gramophone.

  Empty guns, covered with rust,

  Where do you talk tonight?

  Empty saddles in the old corral

  My tears would be dry tonight.

  If you’d only say I’m lonely

  As you carry my old pal—

  Empty saddles in the old corral.

  “Maudlin tosh,” the doc said. “I wish he’d break it.”

  “I like it,” Barton said. “Catchy tune.”

  * * *

  The second day out from Kufra was not exciting. In the morning a few vehicles bogged down in soft sand and everything came to a halt while shovels and sand-channels were used to ease them onto hard ground. For Lester and Malplacket there was little to see and nothing to do. Corky Gibbon explained how a sun compass worked. It was interesting but Lester couldn’t see any headlines in it.

  Mike Dunn was getting his breath back after some hard shoveling when Sandiman strolled over to him. “You might as well know what was in the signal,” he said quietly. “Can’t do any harm now, can it?”

  Dunn grunted agreement. There was sand in his ears.

  “To tell the truth, I’m a bit worried,” Sandiman said. “You see, the signal recalled Captain Lampard to Cairo immediately. I mean, it was a direct order.”

  They looked at the man. Lamp
ard was laughing at something Sergeant Davis had said. He seemed completely at ease, utterly sure of himself. “Who from?” Dunn asked.

  “Well, GHQ Cairo gave the order. The regiment sent the signal but GHQ want him.”

  “Could mean anything. Promotion, posting . . .” But Dunn knew that it would take more than that to turn the heavy wheels of GHQ and drag Lampard back to Cairo in mid-patrol. Sandiman knew it too.

  “I think I recognized the ident for the source at GHQ where the signal originated,” Sandiman said. “I think it was the Provost-Marshal’s office.”

  Dunn picked up his shovel and gave the Sahara a couple of angry whacks. “It can’t be that scrap at the Black Cat,” he said. “They’d have to recall the whole patrol for that. Anyway, since when did anyone give a damn what goes on at the Black Cat?”

  “Thought you ought to know.”

  “The army always catches up with you,” Dunn said. “Jack must know that.” He wished Sandiman hadn’t told him.

  After the soft sand they had to negotiate an awkward stretch of rock. Erosion had sharpened its edges and although the drivers trundled gently in bottom gear, there were two punctures. While the wheels were off, Malplacket asked Dunn what would happen if enemy aircraft caught the patrol like this. Dunn said he supposed they would be killed. Malplacket stopped watching the sky.

  On the third day, rocks gave way to serir. The patrol put on speed and cruised comfortably until noon, when Gibbon’s sun compass lost its shadow and they stopped for lunch: pilchards, beetroot, cheese and pears, all out of tins. Henry Lester took his mess tin and sat next to Dunn. “This is flatter than Kansas,” he said. “And I never thought I’d say that.”

  “Bloody good going.”

  “I feel like a bug on a tennis court. How much more?”

  “A fair bit. Calanscio Serir’s about two hundred miles long.”

  “That’s like New York to Boston.” Lester ate a bit of pilchard. “Anything interesting likely to happen?”

  “Shouldn’t think so.” Dunn chewed as he thought. “Of course, the place to go for excitement is Benghazi. Well . . . Not excitement, perhaps, but . . . Benghazi’s sort of different. So they say, anyway.”

  “Wait a minute. Benghazi . . . The Germans have Benghazi.”

  “Yes. Didn’t stop Stirling and Churchill and Maclean having a dirty weekend there, not so long ago. You never heard? I thought everyone knew.”

  “I heard a rumor,” Lester lied. “Tell me more.”

  Dunn told him. The Prime Minister’s son, Randolph Churchill, had persuaded David Stirling to let him join an SAS patrol. Also in the party was a tough ex-diplomat called Fitzroy Maclean. Stirling’s patrol drove into Benghazi with the aim of planting mines on enemy ships. The plan failed, but they bluffed their way past Italian sentries and walked the streets openly and freely. Then they drove out again.

  “Wearing what?” Lester asked.

  “British army uniform. Same as this. Nobody gave them a second glance, so they said.”

  “That’s amazing.”

  “And on the way home, Stirling put the car in the ditch and they all ended up in hospital.” Dunn laughed.

  At the same time, Malplacket was talking to Gibbon. “Extraordinary terrain,” he said, gesturing at its utter flatness. “Seemingly innocuous, rather like the open sea, yet who knows what menace lurks just over the horizon?”

  “What, over there?” Gibbon aimed a chunk of cheese in the same direction. “Anyone who does any lurking over there is a damn fool. Over that horizon is the Sand Sea. Not a place to take your holidays.”

  “All the same, one feels oneself part of the English buccaneering tradition. Confounding the king’s enemies by slipping ghost-like through these arid wastes as once our ancestors held sway over the high seas. The same blood throbs in your veins, surely?”

  “Dunno about that. My family have been in the paint trade for generations.”

  “Ah.” Malplacket drank some pear juice. “The Scarlet Pimpernel, perhaps? They seek him here—”

  “Yeah, I saw the film, in Cairo. Leslie Howard. He was wearing lipstick. You could tell.”

  While the fuel tanks were being topped up and the tires checked for damage, Lester took Malplacket aside. “Did you ever hear a story about Randolph Churchill walking through Benghazi? In British uniform? With Stirling and the rest of a patrol?”

  “I believe Blanchtower may have mentioned it. Why?”

  “Why? The Prime Minister’s son, strolling around Benghazi? Being saluted by krauts and wops?”

  “I suppose it has a certain style. Blanchtower said the Cabinet were quite amused when they heard.”

  “Hell of a story. Hell of a story.”

  Dunn made sure his jeep was ready to move and walked over to Lampard. “Well, I told him,” he said. “It was like giving a lump of sugar to a horse. Now tell me why you told me to tell him.”

  Lampard shrugged. “Does it matter?”

  “No, I’m just curious. Why didn’t you tell him yourself?”

  “Was he interested?”

  “Fascinated. Nearly spilled his pilchards.”

  “Yes. I thought it might appeal to him . . . Thank you, Mike. Let’s move on, shall we?”

  The patrol drove northwards over the gravel plain all afternoon. Nothing changed except the power of the sun and the angle of the shadows it cast. The noise of engines never varied and there was a huge superabundance of utterly empty sky to look at. Lester and Malplacket had seen more than enough of it already. They dozed off.

  At about four o’clock the vehicles drifted to a halt. Nobody got out, which was unusual. Lester and Malplacket stood up. Everyone was looking ahead, where a stick of black smoke stood on the horizon like a factory chimney.

  Lampard sent Dunn and Trooper Peck in a jeep to reconnoiter. Everyone else had a brew-up and a rest.

  Gibbon did some calculations, and then went in search of Lampard. He found him cleaning the interminable dust and grit from his tommy-gun. “There’s something interesting you ought to see,” Gibbon said.

  Lampard followed him to his maps.

  “There’s nothing interesting for you to see,” Gibbon said. “I just wanted to make an idiot of myself in private.” He was quite serious.

  “Is this about that signal I got at Kufra?”

  Gibbon sighed. “I don’t know, Jack. Maybe it is. Look: I’ll tell you, and then you can tell me. Tell me to go to hell, if you want.” He raked his fingers through his beard, which was already long enough to hide his expression. “I don’t know where to start.”

  “Try the beginning.” Lampard seemed completely composed.

  “OK. The beginning was Harris. How he died. And where. Then Waterman. How he died, also where. And when, too, if it comes to that.” Gibbon wasn’t enjoying this, but he soldiered on. “All the details—precisely what killed them, and who saw it happen, if anyone.”

  “You’ve been talking to Captain Kerr.”

  “He’s been talking to me,” Gibbon said sharply.

  “Of course. I apologize, Corky.” Lampard made a crooked grin, irresistibly boyish. “I should know better. You don’t get an MC by chatting with the adjutant, do you? Forgive me. So . . . Kerr wanted chapter and verse on our last patrol, did he? Well, he’s entitled to play devil’s advocate. After all, there’s the little matter of decorations to be considered. Is that all?”

  Gibbon looked at the horizon. It told him nothing. He felt the pressure to stop now, to say it was none of his business, but that would be a lie; it was the business of them all. “From the adjutant’s questions,” he said, “it was pretty obvious that the official version of the way Harris and Waterman died was a long way from the . . .” He was about to say the truth. “From the facts.”

  “Extraordinary,” Lampard said, and cocked his head.

  “Officially, it seems, Harris got stabbed by a sentry and Waterman got Stuka-ed.”

  “But that’s ludicrous.”

  “You mean your rep
ort didn’t say that?”

  “Certainly not. Did the adjutant tell you it did?”

  “Not in so many words, no. But—”

  “Corky,” Lampard said. “Forget it. Some asshole in Cairo has garbled the whole affair. I expect a typist mixed up two separate reports from two different patrols. Anyway, it’s all history. What matters is now. Agreed?”

  Gibbon hesitated. This wasn’t what he was good at; he was a navigator, for Christ’s sake. “And that signal at Kufra?” he said.

  “My little secret,” Lampard told him, and winked. “Don’t believe everything you hear. All is not what it seems.”

  Trooper Peck drove the jeep slowly and cautiously. He and Dunn made frequent use of their binoculars. After ten miles, they could see that the smoke came from a burning oil drum, and this was odd enough to make them even more cautious. It was Trooper Peck who noticed a wink of light from far to the west, the dying gleam of a chance reflection from a windscreen caught by the setting sun. They worked toward it and eventually picked out a sprinkle of dots on the horizon. They left the jeep and walked for an hour: a calculated risk that brought them five miles closer, near enough for their binoculars to reveal a cluster of trucks. The blaze of light behind the trucks washed out all detail.

  * * *

  Captain Lessing knew that placing a smoke marker for Jakowski to home in on was dangerous: anything that attracted Jakowski’s men might attract others. But he had no choice. Captain di Marco had underlined what was already obvious, that Jakowski’s navigation was a mess; and Lessing could think of no other way to help guide his commanding officer toward the rendezvous.

  Meanwhile, he ordered more trenches to be dug and organized a permanent watch, one man guarding each side of the camp, changed every two hours. After sundown the change was every hour. Staring into the desert at night was wearying work. Even the best sentry lost concentration.

  Lessing discussed tactics with Lieutenant Fleischmann. “What do we do if a British force attacks us?” he asked.

  “By day? Let them get within range of our mortars and see how many trucks we can knock out, for a start.”