Eagle at Taranto (Commander Cochrane Smith series)

by Alan Evans

  The quiet...

  “Stand to!”

  Katy woke at the call of the sentry, quickly sloughed off her sleeping-bag and dressed. She sat on the bag beside Bert under the net, huddled inside her overcoat and with the camera slung around her neck. She watched the sky lighten in the east and now there was that eerie red line along the horizon and the first brilliant shaft of sunlight. A white building stood in the distance: the barracks at Musaid.

  A shudder ran through the earth beneath her but she did not realise what it was and wondered for a second if she had imagined it. Then she caught her breath as the thunder of the barrage rolled across the plateau and the flashes stood like a long fence of flames where the shells burst around Musaid.

  Bert threw at her: “It’s started!” He clawed his way out from under the net.

  What had started? The Italian invasion? Of course. Katy followed him, shivering in the early chill, as he hurried with long, gangling strides to the corner of the barracks and paused there. Katy peeped cautiously around his shoulder. Together they watched as the barrage went on, finally ceased.

  Katy was aware of voices behind her, turned her head and saw the young officer and the soldiers rolling the camouflage net from his truck. Powell was with them; they had cleared away the net from his eight-hundredweight first. Her sleeping-bag and Bert’s had gone: Powell had thrown them into the truck.

  A runner came doubling back from the direction of the Coldstreams’ forward position, running along the side of the barracks towards them. He carried his rifle at the trail, his boots kicked up little spurts of dust and his steel helmet wobbled. He halted when he came up to them. His face, burned reddish-brown by the sun, glistened with sweat that poured down from under the helmet.

  He panted, “Officer’s compliments, but he says the Eyeties are moving in on Musaid and he reckons this place will be next, so would you please be so good as to get down the road off the escarpment quick as you can?”

  Bert grumbled, “I’ve waited one hell of a long time to get up here and report this war. I don’t see any reason to pull out because —”

  The whistling shriek cut him off and the soldier bawled, “Get down!” He pulled the pair of them down with him. Then the shells burst. Katy felt each one as a blow on the ears, an upward kick off the ground under her. Dust lifted and hung in a thickening cloud that blinded her and set her coughing. The barrage went on interminably but finally slowed, faltered into silence.

  The soldier stood up, coughing and spitting, cursing under his breath. Bert and Katy shakily followed suit. The dust was settling or drifting away on the wind. There were holes punched in the roof and walls of the barracks and craters stippled the desert.

  Bert looked back at the truck the soldiers had been working on and said huskily, “Oh, sweet Jesus!”

  It had taken a direct hit and was a smoking, crumpled mass of scrap. Bodies were tossed around it. The runner strode over to them, looked at each in turn then across at Powell’s truck, only ten yards away but apparently unharmed. He turned and trotted back to Bert and told him flatly, “Nobody can do a thing for them, poor sods.” Then he peered past Bert and Katy disbelievingly, and said, “Here! Look at that!”

  They turned and saw the invading army drawn up in the middle distance, ready to advance but as if on parade. Motor-cyclists stood in the van, followed by light cars and their columns of trucks that stretched away until lost to sight. The runner said, “There’s millions o’ the bastards!” Then: “I’ve got to get back.” He looked sternly at Bert and Katy. “Remember them orders. Get down that road jilty.” Then he straightened his helmet and doubled away along the side of the barracks, back to the twenty-odd guardsmen who waited to take on the advancing army.

  Jilty. Katy knew now that it was another Indian word and meant “quick”. She did her best, trying not to shake as she took her photographs, thinking: Oh God! Bert’s gone too far this time. He’s really landed us in it.

  His voice came, mildly irascible: “When you’re all through here? The truck looks O.K. so maybe we’d better get the hell out.

  Katy ran with him to the truck, trying not to look at the dead. But she had to pass close among them, saw more than she wanted, saw Powell, friendly Powell, with half his chest blown away. She gagged, sobbed, sick to her stomach.

  Bert panted. He was no longer young, and the run of a hundred yards had left him breathless, leaning on the wing of the truck. “You claimed once before — that you could drive this thing. Now looks a good time — to try.”

  Holes were ripped in the canvas tilt and there looked to be new dents in the brown and grey bodywork but Katy slid in behind the wheel and the engine fired at her third attempt. Bert had dragged himself in. Katy jammed the truck into first gear, swung it around in a circle and drove down the narrow, winding road from the plateau, the sea glinting blue on her left and below. Engineers were busy along the road and Bert said still panting, “They’re getting ready to activate the mines, I guess.”

  The flat crack! and rapping of rifle and machine-gun fire followed them as they wound around the bends. At the bottom Katy changed up and drove along the road back through Sollum and on, until they passed a battery of twenty-five-pounder guns in a staggered line under their camouflage nets. They were not sunk in pits, because the desert made for hard digging, but poked their barrels over low walls of piled rocks.

  Bert was improving. He said, “Pull in here,” pointing to a shallow depression that ran down to the road, possibly once a river-bed, now lined with straggling scrub. Katy swung the truck into it and stopped the engine. In the silence they could hear the now distant crackle and thump! of the fighting up on the plateau.

  They got out and draped the camouflage net over the stubby eight-hundredweight then walked slowly back along the depression towards the guns. Bert’s fieldglasses swung from the strap around his neck and Katy cradled her camera in one hand. She thought, March to the sound of the guns. She’d heard or read that phrase. It had an ugly, frightening meaning now.

  The depression widened and the guns lay ahead of them, squatting behind their rough parapets. A camouflaged truck was parked in the rear and Bert headed for it. As they came up to it a sergeant ducked out from under the draped nets and confronted them, “Stone me!” He stared at Katy. In spite of the overcoat, slacks and boots, wide-brimmed hat crammed on her head, she was a woman, no doubt of it, and on his gun position. Then, as he turned to Bert, he noted the war correspondent flashes on both their shoulders. “Shouldn’t you have a conducting officer, sir — miss?”

  Bert said, “We did. He was killed up by the barracks at Sollum. So were the drivers and the wireless-operator.”

  “Ah!” The sergeant nodded. “Well, the captain’s on a shoot at the moment. Maybe when things are quieter he’ll be able to see you.”

  “That’s O.K.,” Bert said seriously. “We didn’t have an appointment.”

  The sergeant grinned and asked, “Is that a Canadian accent, sir?”

  Bert shook his head. “American, U.S. of A.”

  “Go on. You’re a long way from home.”

  Bert said drily, “Aren’t we all? What’s going on, anyway?”

  The sergeant pointed. “The Coldstreams have pulled out from up on the plateau where you were. Now the Eyeties are coming down the road from the barracks to the village at the bottom.”

  Bert used his binoculars then passed them to Katy. She adjusted the focus and saw the cliff, the snaking road. Light sparked and she winced, then realised it was the sun’s rays reflecting from the windscreeen of a truck. It rounded a shoulder in the steep descent and passed out of her sight.

  The sergeant said, “See the truck, miss?”

  Katy shuddered as the guns fired a salvo, the shock catching her breath. She gulped. “Yes.”

  “We’ve noticed that if we fire when one disappears round that bend it’ll just show around the next bend when the shells come down there.”

  She waited and watched with the glasses
at her eyes, saw the truck appear again, then it was hidden by smoke and clouds of dust as the shells burst. When the wind blew the clouds away the truck lay on its side. But she saw Italian infantry spilling down past the litter of wrecked vehicles to the plain, like a grey stream washing around rocks. The stream became a river when it reached the foot of the track, flowing slowly through the now shattered buildings of Sollum.

  The twenty-five-pounders and the battalion of British infantry who defended the coast road gave before the steadily moving enemy tide. They fought until a position became untenable then moved back to another. Katy and Bert went with the guns on each move and the tide only halted when night fell. It seemed the Italians did not want to risk an action in the dark. Katy positioned the truck in rear of the guns. She and Bert draped the camouflage net over it, ate cold corned beef and biscuits then dozed fitfully, woken again and again by sporadic fire as Italian sentries saw, or thought they saw British patrols.

  By the afternoon of the next day, the fourteenth of September, they had withdrawn past Buq-Buq. Red-eyed from lack of sleep, Bert and Katy were still with the artillery. She overheard one sweating gunner mutter, “They can keep the bloody place. There’s Buq-Buq bugger all there anyway.” That was true enough but the Italians were still advancing.

  During the fifteenth the withdrawal went on to Alam Hamid. The twenty-five pounders were firing faster than ammunition could be brought up for them, so when their current supply of shells was exhausted the guns would be hooked on to the trucks and filtered back through the infantry now dug in behind them. The entire operation, apparently, was being described as an “Orderly withdrawal”.

  Bert growled, “Withdrawal? To me it looks like a retreat.

  But I’m damned if I can see what else they can do.” He glanced sideways at Katy where she sat at the wheel of the eight-hundredweight intent on her driving, eyes squinted against the clouds of dust thrown up by the bouncing, swayings guns ahead. He asked her, “Have you figured out the forces involved around here?”

  Katy said, “I think so. There’s something like one battalion of infantry. Under a Colonel Moubray.”

  Bert nodded, “Coldstream Guards.”

  “And this battery of guns and the armoured cars.”

  “That’s about the size of it. This Moubray, he’s got another couple of companies of foot soldiers and a few medium guns as well, but that’s the lot — maybe 2000 men.” He jabbed his thumb over his shoulder. “And back there are five. Italian divisions, 50,000 men! This bout is strictly no contest, a mismatch.”

  Katy was unamused, “You’re not reporting the fights from Madison Square Garden now.”

  Bert grinned irrepressibly through the sweat. “Boy, do I know it!”

  On the sixteenth they had retreated to Alam El Dab and Sidi Barrani was at their backs. Katy waited by the truck, sitting under the spread camouflage netting in the illusion it gave of dappled shade. The sun was overhead, her body ran with sweat and she seemed to have lived through an eternity in the desert. But her main worry was about film. She had taken many pictures and was down to her last three rolls.

  Bert had gone to the gunners’ command truck to seek what information there was. Suddenly she noticed him hastening back to her, his shambling walk now a shambling gallop. She scrambled to her feet and began heaving off the camouflage net as she saw the gunners hurriedly striking theirs. She had come to know these warning signs, watched for them.

  Bert panted up and wheezed, “Let’s get the hell outa here! There’s fifty Italian tanks working around inland to outflank us. The guns just got the order to pull out.” The towing trucks were rolling up now for the guns to be hooked on to.

  Bert helped Katy to lash the rolled camouflage net on top of the truck. She slid in behind the wheel, pressed the starter and the engine whirred but did not fire. She tried again without success. Bert muttered, “Oh, Jesus.” But then the engine started and Katy gunned it, slotted in the gear and the truck jerked away over the dusty earth. Behind them came the guns.

  By nightfall the Italians were in Sidi Barrani regrouping, and the twenty-five pounders had withdrawn to the east. Thankful for the respite, Katy dozed in her sleeping-bag beside the truck but she woke when Bert spread his own bag alongside her. He said quietly, “I hear the British have an armoured division, the 7th, up on the plateau. It’s below strength but the plan is, when the Italians reach Mersa Matruh, — and that’s only another sixty miles along the coast — the British will hit them with that division. It’s supposed to cut off the head of the Italian advance, isolate it and then destroy it.”

  Katy, watching his face, said, “You don’t like that idea.”

  “It’s a great idea — if it works. If it doesn’t, then the road to Cairo and the Suez Canal is wide open.”

  Katy slept badly that night despite the accumulated weariness of long days spent on the battlefield. She stared out through the net at the stars and the flares that drifted and burned occasionally over Sidi Barrani where the Italians were nervously searching for British patrols. Would this be France all over again? Not a terrifyingly quick Blitzkrieg like that launched by the German Panzers but a slow inexorable flood of Italian divisions in overwhelming numbers rolling down over Alexandria and on to Cairo.

  And she thought about Mark Ward. She’d had to leave Alex without telling him. Many days had passed then. She still needed to make a decision.

  It was a quiet dawn, and as the day wore on the Italians made no move. At noon a score of aircraft milled in a dog fight far down the coast towards Sollum. Bert said, “Looks like the British are bombing the roads, trying to cut their supply lines.”

  Katy remembered Jamie Dunbar’s talk of the dangerous missions flown by Eagle’s pilots. Those aircraft over Sollum — were they Swordfish? They were too far away to be identified. A man had to have skill, single-minded concentration and luck up there if he was to survive. She watched one of the distant planes spiral down, trailing a thin feather of smoke that puffed into a ball as it crashed on the dust and rock of the coastal plain.

  Bert asked, “What’s the matter?”

  Katy took her hands from her face, “Nothing.” She turned and walked away. He started to follow her, puzzled and concerned, but she said, “Just leave me alone, Bert. Please.”

  The Italians were reported to be digging in and next day Bert said, “We’re going to Alex. We’ll turn over this buggy to the Army there and I’ll leave you and catch the train to Cairo, file my story and be back in a day or two. Give me your films and I’ll get ‘em developed.”

  “Do you think they’ll let us use them?”

  “Some, maybe.”

  “What about the others?”

  “They’ll keep them and give them back to you after the war.”

  “You’re kidding.”

  But he wasn’t. Such censorship routines were well established.

  Katy spent most of her time in Alexandria either bathing or sleeping. Eagle was in port but she did not see Ward and concluded, rightly, that he was flying missions. She was disappointed — or relieved, could not make up her mind which was true.

  When Bert returned and they went out to some nameless place in the desert again, in another truck and with another escorting officer, they found nothing had changed. Bert walked back from Headquarters — a widely dispersed group of camouflaged vehicles — to where Katy waited by their eight-hundredweight. He said, “The Intelligence guys report the Italians are building fortifications at Sidi Barrani and they’re working on the road up from Sollum. They’re not going anywhere for a long while, I guess.”

  He took off his hat and wiped sweat from his brow with the back of his hand. “I reckon Wavell’s bluff is still working. This fighting retreat has got the Italians thinking they’re up against tough opposition so they’re playing it slow and cautious. They’re going to build a good road to bring up their supplies from Bardia and they won’t move till that’s done and those supplies are stockpiled.”

  The c
rew of an armoured car were working around their vehicle nearby. All of them eyed Katy in her khaki drill shirt and trousers and one called across, “How long did you sign on for, miss? Or are you in for the duration, like us?”

  Katy laughed with them, but she could go home soon. Less than two months of her contract remained.

  Bert said, “Too late to start back today. We’ll stay the night and go to Alex tomorrow.”

  “O.K.” Then Katy asked, curious: “You said ‘the Intelligence guys report’. How do they find out?”

  Bert shrugged. “They take all sorts of scraps of information, put them together like clues, try to make a single picture. Photographs and sightings from aircraft, patrols sent out on foot in the night. Add ‘em all up. That kinda thing.”

  Katy said, “I see.”

  But she did not, really. It couldn’t be as easy as he was making out.

  Jamie whispered, “Wait here.”

  Corporal Timms nodded. “Watch out for yourself, sir.”

  The rest of Jamie’s patrol, six men, were spread out to the rear, prostrate on the sand and rock of the desert, hidden amongst its scrub, invisible.

  The Italian line was close. Usually on these patrols you couldn’t see a damn thing and found out where the enemy was mostly by listening, but tonight Jamie could see the irregular humps of the emplacements, the strung webs of barbed-wire. He moved forwards, snaking along on his belly. He wore a sweater over his khaki shirt, corduroy trousers and suede shoes. A Balaclava helmet was pulled on over his head. His face blackened, he held his pistol in his right hand. There was no moon but the sky was clear and sprinkled with stars so he needed cover. He had to work from one patch of stunted vegetation or dry scrub to the next.

  He was there to assess enemy strengths, to gain some idea of how many men held this section of the line, how many machine-guns, how they were deployed. This was his third and last close reconnaissance of the night. After this they would start the long trek back to their own lines. Jamie had been detailed to lead the patrol because he was good at this, probably the best.