A Good Clean Fight

by Derek Robinson

  “Not now. Too much to do.”

  “Says who? Come back in three weeks, nothing will have changed. Believe me.”

  Schramm shook his head. “Too much to do,” he said.

  * * *

  Lampard had four hours’ sleep and got up at midnight. He left Dunn in charge’and set off with Sergeant Davis in one of the captured trucks. If they failed to return by noon, Dunn was to take command.

  Corky Gibbon watched them go. “Let’s talk,” he said to Dunn. They went and sat in the station-wagon, with the doors shut. The leather seats were cool and comfortable, there was sand on the floor and the sweet memory of hot diesel in the air. It reminded Dunn of being driven home from the seaside when he was a boy. “Sandiman told me what was in that signal,” Gibbon said.

  “Me too.”

  “I asked Jack about it.”

  “What did he say?”

  “Not much. Tried to laugh it off. That bothers me, Mike. It shouldn’t be any of my business, so why didn’t he tell me to go and run up my thumb? And another thing. The adjutant—”

  “Harris and Waterman. I got cross-examined too.”

  “Jack’s report of that patrol was all balls,” Gibbon said. “You know and I know that Harris got killed because of a cock-up, and as for poor old Waterman . . .”

  “God alone knows what Jack thought he was up to then,” Dunn said flatly.

  “On the bloody spree, that’s what he was up to. On the razzle.”

  Dunn was silent. He remembered Lampard on Barce airfield, collecting unused bombs as the pencil-fuses burned, seeking fresh targets, manic, unstoppable, when he should have been leading everyone back to the Jebel at high speed. He’d got away with it then. Jalo had been the same sort of lunacy only far more needless, and in broad daylight too; and Waterman had paid the price.

  “Oh well,” he said. “The adj saw through him, didn’t he? Clever bloke, the adj. Nothing we can do about it now.” He was feeling sleepy. Gloomy talk usually did that to him.

  “It’s your neck,” Gibbon said. “It’s your funeral.”

  “Meaning what?”

  “I think the man’s an addict. He’s got to have his dose of glory. If anything goes wrong, if he cocks it up, he’s got to have a double dose. He made a cock-up over Harris and that’s why he took us into Jalo, chasing the Luftwaffe, for God’s sake.”

  “It might have worked.” But there was no passion in Dunn’s loyalty.

  “So now he’s got two cock-ups to make up for. What’s worse, he lied about them and he got found out. That’s three cock-ups. What d’you think he’ll do next?”

  “Hit Beda Fomm,” Dunn said. “As ordered. What else can he do?” Gibbon merely shook his head. “He’s the CO, Corky. What he says, goes.”

  “I think his brakes have failed,” Gibbon said. “I think he can’t stop himself.”

  * * *

  It was at least fifty kilometers to Beda Fomm and the first twenty-odd would be over twisting, dipping tracks, so Lampard drove with the headlights on. He knew this part of the Jebel fairly well. It was likely that there were enemy patrols about, so the faster he moved, the better. This was like dashing through a rainstorm to miss the drops: it wasn’t logical, it didn’t always work, but what was the alternative?

  They came out of the last slopes of the Jebel without having alarmed anything more than a couple of herds of goats.

  The plain south of Benghazi was crisscrossed with farm tracks and camel trails. Lampard let Davis drive, while he tried to pick out a route toward Beda Fomm. Twice they almost blundered into military camps—first an infantry unit, to judge by the sea of tents, and then a squadron of tanks, black and motionless as cattle—and each time Davis had to back out. An hour of this wandering wore out Lampard’s patience. He could hear the rumble of heavy traffic only a few kilometers away. He aimed for the noise.

  Davis found the coast road. It was busy. They waited until a long column of supply trucks roared by southbound; then Davis accelerated hard, slammed briskly through the gears, and added himself to the end of the line.

  The column drove fast. After seven or eight minutes, Davis shouted and pointed to the right. Lampard saw an Mel 10 dimly illuminated in the shielded lights of a vehicle. Men moved, as flat as shadows. Probably a nightfighter, probably being serviced. “That must be Al Maghrun,” Lampard said. “Beda Fomm’s about ten kilometers, on the left.” But as he spoke, the column slowed down. And stopped.

  Checkpoint.

  Up ahead, flashlights flickered alongside the leading vehicle. Hurricane lamps, striped barriers, machine guns on tripods. Davis began to reverse. “Hang on, hang on,” Lampard said. He jumped down. The truck in front had a red lamp hooked to its tail-gate. He removed it and hooked it on the back of his own truck. “That makes us official,” he told Davis. “Now let’s see if they check everyone or just the leader of the band.”

  The column moved off, and it was still picking up speed as the tail-end vehicle went through the checkpoint. Lampard waved slackly at a guard who was counting the trucks. “Pick the bones out of that, Hans,” he said.

  Davis saw a turn-off where Beda Fomm ought to be and he drove down it. He parked and killed the engine. A wind had got up, bringing a strange, sharp smell. Davis took a good sniff. “Margate sands,” he said. “Bank holiday.” It was the smell of the sea.

  The soil was sandy and it seemed to grow nothing but stunted pines and needle-sharp cactus. Lampard was convinced he knew which way the airfield lay, but after walking for forty minutes the night was still full of pines and cactus; and the slow, shuffling pace of their progress had become wearying. What’s more, dawn wasn’t far off.

  “Stop,” Lampard said. “Chocolate.” He broke off two big chunks and gave one to Davis. As they stood and ate, a double row of warm yellow lights sprang into life and illuminated Beda Fomm. The perimeter was only fifty yards away. It was like a gift from the gods. The lights were runway beacons. After a while a Junkers Tri-Motor dropped out of the darkness and touched down. The beacons went out, but as the Junkers taxied to its arrival area the pilot used a spotlight, and the spotlight swept over a flock of 109s, widely dispersed.

  On their way back, the captured truck broke down in the Jebel. Lampard and Davis hid it and walked home. They reached the camp just after eleven a.m., soaked in sweat, and ravenous. “Beda Fomm’s on,” Lampard told Dunn. “Briefing at sixteen-thirty, then we eat, then we go.” He looked around. “Where are the prisoners?”

  “Gone. Sandy managed to signal an LRDG patrol that’s going home and they said they’d take the prisoners provided we threw in a case of tinned pears, so we did.”

  “Commercial travelers,” Lampard said. “What else can you expect?”

  * * *

  Fanny Barton surprised Skull by asking him to select an enemy airfield for the next dive-bombing attack.

  “Why?” Skull said. “You’ve always picked your own targets. What’s happened? Writer’s block? Brewer’s droop? Dropped your crayons?”

  “I just thought you ought to earn your pay.”

  “I see.” Skull searched the CO’s face and found nothing but serious intent. “There is no suitable target for three Kittybombers,” he said. “Not unless you count the field at Berka, which is very handy for the British War Cemetery outside Benghazi.”

  “You’ll find something. If there’s nothing suitable, give me the least unsuitable. Teatime OK?”

  Skull went off to his tent and fished out his maps. He read all the latest intelligence bumf that had come in on the Bombay. The Luftwaffe had plenty of airfields and thickets of flak batteries around each of them. How could men fly into targets like that? And yet he knew that Pip Patterson and Hick Hooper would follow Barton without hesitation, wherever he led. He knew they were conscious of the danger: he had seen fear in their eyes, during the pre-op briefings. Nevertheless, as combat approached, the pilots became intensely alive in a way that Skull could always recognize but never understand.

  T
he doc appeared in the tent doorway and sat on his haunches. “I’ll give you five English pounds for that mawkish bit of sentimental slush,” he said. “This isn’t a joke. I don’t make jokes on such a lavish scale.”

  Skull picked up the gramophone record of “Empty Saddles.” “This?”

  “It’s rancid. The very words make me retch.”

  “I like it. This is the voice of the common man you hear.”

  “It’s a godawful dirge. We can’t avoid the dying but do we have to put up with the dirge?”

  “The pilots like it too. Ask them. Ask Fanny.”

  The doc’s face twisted as if he had toothache. “Play something else, can’t you? What’s on the other side?”

  Skull turned the record over. “‘I’m Headin’ For the Last Round-up,’” he said. “Another gem.”

  The doc snatched the record from him and smashed it on his knee. “I should have done that long ago,” he said harshly. He turned and walked away.

  * * *

  What convinced Greek George was his reflection. One day the serious little girl brought him a small mirror, much cracked. It was the rearview mirror from an airplane. Not his own. Wrong shape. For the first time since the crash he could see what he looked like. He looked like an Arab. The sun had burned him black and his hair, which was naturally black, was matted and tangled. He had a long nose, slightly bent in the crash, and hollow cheeks which seemed to push his cheekbones up. George was amazed at how Arabic he looked and he decided it was time to leave.

  The old man was not happy when George got his message across. There was a lot of rapid talking amongst the party. The old man came back. He used some of the simple words that George had learned, plus some mime and a few symbols drawn in the sand. What it added up to was: not yet. Too many German patrols. Too risky. George nodded, and the serious little girl nodded too. Why take chances? There was time. When God made time, He made plenty of it.

  * * *

  “About your affidavit, old chap.”

  “I’ve given him the letter.”

  “I know, but . . . Did you use an Egyptian or an English lawyer?”

  “Who cares?”

  “The point is, Egyptian affidavits aren’t recognized by a British court-martial.”

  “OK, so my lawyer was Anglo-Egyptian. Guy named Kelly, Muhammed Kelly, very smart fellow. Satisfied?”

  On the other side of the camp, one of the cooks was singing We’ll meet again, don’t know where, don’t know when . . .

  “There never was an affidavit, was there?”

  “Just shut up about it. What Lampard doesn’t know won’t hurt us.”

  “I merely asked, old chap. Merely asked.”

  * * *

  Paul Schramm was a fair man. He gave other people the same chance that he gave himself, which was one chance and no more. Either you succeeded or you failed. When he failed, he condemned himself. When people failed him, he wrote them off. He had written off Dr. Maria Grandinetti. She had let him down and so, in his mind, he had wiped her out: eliminated all emotional value she might have had for him. An act of destruction like that was not achieved without heat, and after she had told him, with such appallingly casual frankness, that she had ended the life of Kurt Debratz and several other casualties, Schramm’s rage had been intense. Now he believed it had burned itself out. He could walk away from her. Limp away, at least. If he felt frozen, that was just what you would expect when rage went cold. It came as no surprise. It was an old, familiar feeling.

  Meanwhile, thank God, there was work to be done.

  In the middle of reading a thick report on the Allied jamming of Luftwaffe radio frequencies and Luftwaffe countermeasures to evade such jamming, he suddenly thought of the Takoradi Trail again. Why drive? he asked himself. Just because the SAS drive everywhere, must we always copy them?

  He pulled down some technical volumes and checked some figures. He found a large-scale map of the Sahara and studied it. Then he telephoned Captain di Marco.

  “Suppose we put extra fuel tanks in a Heinkel one-eleven bomber,” he said, “and flew it at its most economical cruising speed, would that put the Takoradi Trail within its range?”

  “It depends. From where to where, exactly?”

  “From an airfield near Benghazi to . . . um . . . Fort Lamy in Chad.”

  Schramm heard the faint swish of an overhead fan as di Marco thought about it. “Probably yes,” di Marco said. “In fact definitely yes.” Exultation worked on Schramm like a strong drug. “Of course the machine would not be able to bomb Fort Lamy when it got there,” di Marco said, snatching the drug away.

  “Why not?”

  “Because if you were to add bombs to such a load of fuel, the machine would be too heavy to take off.”

  “Oh.” Schramm felt foolish. “I should have thought of that.”

  “There is an alternative. It would mean establishing a landing-ground deep in the desert, for instance at Defa. The Heinkel could refuel there. That would save weight. There has been a landing-ground near Defa in the past. I have used it.”

  “Look,” Schramm said, “I have no authority to ask this, but would you be willing to act as navigator? If I can get a Heinkel?”

  “I might.”

  “It would be something, wouldn’t it? If we could bring it off.”

  Di Marco did not comment. “It would be best if I spoke to Colonel von Mansdorf, I think,” he said. Schramm agreed. “Bear in mind,” di Marco added, “that I have no authority either, and that General Schaefer may not be in the mood to take risks. The last risk he took did not pay off particularly well, did it?”

  Schramm tried to get back to work on Allied jamming. He was not a radio expert, but it was important for anyone in Intelligence to understand at least the basics of all things connected with air combat. He slogged on through the report and he was skimming its conclusions when the phrase garbled signal tripped a circuit in his brain and abruptly swamped his memory with the desperate struggle to wade through a bloody-minded railway station for a train he could never catch. The whiff of desperation was so strong that he had to put down the book, get up, walk around the room. The scene was as sharp and clear in his mind as a film in a cinema, a black-and-white film, because the train was white. All white. An all-white train.

  He went down the corridor to the lavatory and washed his face. Something felt wrong: either the water was too slippery or his skin was oily; whichever it was, his hands seemed remote from his face. He went back to his office and wrote Hospital train on a piece of paper. The only white train he had ever seen had been a hospital train. Why had he been so hell-bent on getting on a hospital train? He tore up the paper and burned the scraps in an ashtray. He threw the ashes out of the window. He put the ashtray inside a desk drawer. He was thinking of washing his hands when he heard a faint flicker of laughter that made him stop breathing. It came from somewhere in the building and it could not possibly be anyone but Dr. Grandinetti.

  It was not repeated, and soon his lungs demanded more air. He was excited—by fear, anger, delight, revenge? He didn’t know which. Maybe some, or all, or none; maybe something else altogether. It was foolish to stare at a wall, so he went into the corridor. Empty. He ran to one end and listened hard. Nothing. He ran to the other end. Someone’s telephone rang. Someone answered it. Otherwise, the day was a vacuum.

  The outside doors swung open and Max came in. “Hallo!” he said. “We tried to find you but you weren’t in your office.” He came closer and cocked his head. “There’s a bar in Bremen that makes a drink called a Suffering Bastard,” he said, “and you look as if you could do with about seven of them.”

  “What’s going on? What’s she doing here?”

  “Came to say goodbye. They’re sending her back to Italy to run a new hospital in Milan. If you hurry you might—”

  Schramm hurried. She was not outside the building and he ran as fast as his idiot leg would let him. It was fast enough. She was around the corner, talking to Hof
fmann. Her car was nearby, the red open-top Alfa tourer. He went and sat in it.

  Eventually Benno kissed her, a brotherly-sisterly kiss on each cheek, and she got into the car.

  He risked one long, direct, eye-to-eye look. Same old Maria. Same old speculative glance. Same old almost-smile. If she went to Milan this might be the last time they would ever meet. There was, of course, no possibility that she might embrace him: not here, not in uniform, not in public. Even for her to take his hand was more than he could expect; what if some passing airman observed them? So she was a doctor; so what? How could she possibly know that he was wading in blood from a self-inflicted wound? He had one chance to say that meeting her had been the most astonishing experience of his life, to say that love was obviously futile and irrelevant in wartime, to say that simply knowing her was astonishing and exciting. Damn. He’d used “astonishing” twice. “Killed anybody today?” he asked.

  “Have you?”

  “None of your business.”

  “Same here.”

  “Look . . .” He was shocked by what they had said. “I’m not really angry with you.”

  “Of course you’re not.” She leaned across and used her fingers to smooth his brow. “Stop frowning. It makes you look like a walrus. Why are you so bad-tempered, Paul?”

  Schramm gave up. He slumped in his seat. “God knows,” he said. “You’ve been playing God lately. You tell me.”

  “All right, listen. You’re angry because you know you’re wrong. You keep denying this, but you’re too honest to get away with it. Last time we met you weren’t just angry, you were furious. You were in a rage with me. Why? Because I did what you had always wanted to do.”

  “Kill helpless patients? Not me, doctor. Not me.”

  “You wanted to be rid of Kurt Debratz. I saw it in your face. Kurt Debratz disgusted you. He was squalid, stinking, maimed, deteriorating, hopeless, useless, and full of pain, and he wasn’t dying fast enough for you. You wanted to kill him. Isn’t that the truth?”

  “It wasn’t my job,” Schramm muttered. “He wasn’t my responsibility.”

  “No, but he upset you, didn’t he? Believe it or not, I ended his life because I loved him. I did what you wanted to do, but you couldn’t admit that to yourself. In fact you hated yourself for wanting it, so you turned your anger on me instead. You couldn’t afford to hate yourself, so you hated me. Simple, isn’t it?”