Seize and Ravage

by Richard Townsend Bickers

  ***

  When the Brigadier had taken off to return to Cairo, with the promise — or, as Taggart regarded it, the threat — of another visit in a few days' time, Taggart sent for the troop sergeant major.

  ‘I want you to swap the mortars and their ammo for four Brens and as much ammo for them as we can manage, Mr. Vowden.’

  Vowden grinned broadly. ‘I think I can manage that, sir.’

  ‘If possible, swap two of the Brens for a Boys and its ammo.’

  Vowden's face dropped. ‘That's not going to be so easy, sir.’

  ‘See what you can do. We're moving into the Jebel Akhdar tonight, by lorry. If you can't fix things up before we leave, there may be some unit around there which will oblige. The Aussies are in Tobruk, and they'll soon be in Benghazi. I should think they'd be the best bet for a helpful breach of the rules.’

  Not to say of direct orders, thought Taggart.

  ‘I've run into a couple of old pals here, sir. I'm sure I can wangle the mortars off our hands.’

  ‘I'm rather keen on an anti-tank weapon, Sar' Major. If you can't lay your hands on a Boys, a captured Italian one will do.’

  ‘I've been talking to the armoured car senior N.C.Os, sir. The Italians haven't got an anti-tank rifle. The only gun they've got is a forty-seven millimetre, towed, one. No use to us, I'm afraid, sir.’

  ‘Damn the Italians, then. Why the devil haven't they got something we need among all that captured weaponry? We'll be feeding ourselves when we move. You'd better win a few extra cooking utensils.’

  ‘Leave it to me, sir. And I've been getting a few hints from the chaps who've got their knees brown, about the best way to make the rations palatable.’

  ‘You'll never get your commission if you carry on like this, Mr. Vowden: you're indispensable.’

  Vowden laughed. ‘Thank you, sir. I hope you're wrong.’

  ‘Fall the chaps in. I want to give them the gen, as the R.A.F. say.’

  FIVE

  X Troop spent the time between the Brigadier's departure for Cairo and their own, the next day, for Libya, on maintaining their hard physical condition. They marched under full loads, they ran miles with lighter burdens, they practised unarmed combat, they fired thousands of rounds with Bren, rifle and submachine-gun, they impaled sand-and-straw-filled sacks on their bayonets, they paired off and made dummy butt and bayonet thrusts and parries at one another. They cooled off twice a day in the sea. They thoroughly enjoyed themselves and the strong sun quickly began to tan them.

  ‘This is almost as good as the pool at the Gezira Club,’ Stuart said, lying on the beach in the evening and drinking a bottle of the Brigadier's beer. ‘Except for the sufragiyye. Or sufragis, as people who speak sloppy Arabic say.’

  ‘What are they?’ Gosland asked. ‘Bits of skirt?’ ‘Those are bints; or, to be a purist, banaat in the plural. A sufragi is a waiter.’

  Taggart said ‘If you spent a whole day in the sun, to darken your face, and if we get hold of some Arab clothes, could you pass as an Arab, Angus?’

  Stuart looked startled. ‘Well, there are no blue-eyed Arabs, as far as I know. And I don't pretend my accent is a hundred per cent.’

  ‘Pity. I was thinking of sending you into Tripoli to do a recce.’

  ‘I could do it, I suppose. Keep my eyes half-shut... wear sun glasses... grope my way around, pretending to be almost blind. Trouble is, one's walk always gives one away when one tries to impersonate any sort of native.’

  ‘I'll have to send Kulick, then.’

  ‘He doesn't lope like an Egyptian, or move like a civvy Libyan: but I suppose he could put up a show. He certainly doesn't need a tan! But there are differences in accent, spelling and pronunciation, and colloquial expressions, between the Lebanese and Iraqi Arabics that Kulick speaks, and Egyptian and Libyan Arabics. The Libyan dialect is different from the way an Egyptian speaks.’

  ‘He'd have to pretend to be a visitor from Iraq or Lebanon, then.’

  ‘Oh, yes, that would be convincing. The trouble is, that he would arouse a lot of curiosity in anyone he spoke to. All Arabs are great on gossip and they're as inquisitive as monkeys. One basic question would be, how did he get there? There's been no travel from Iraq or Lebanon to Libya since last June, when Italy came into the war. And there've been U-boats in the Med since the war began, so there've been no passenger ships, except in convoy, for a long time.’

  ‘I know Kulick's well able to invent some convincing story. Suppose I want to send someone to pose as an Italian, Ted: how reliable is Cassola?’

  ‘I'd rather depend on Corporal Lewis, although I don't know him well. But Cassola's such a bloody show-off, he'd do a good job: just to come back and boast about it. He's quick-witted enough to spin a plausible yarn to explain himself.’

  ‘At his age, he'd be suspect straight away if he wasn't in Italian uniform. I'm told that all the young Italian farmers in Libya have been called up; all the young men, in fact, whatever their jobs.’

  ‘Plenty of Italian uniforms lying around,’ Stuart said. ‘Our chaps have taken whole stores full of them, as well as prisoners and weapons and vehicles.’

  ‘One problem with Cassola,’ said Gosland.

  ‘What?’ Taggart asked.

  ‘Women. He's a stallion, is Cassola. Can't leave 'em alone. They won't leave him alone either: run after him like bitches on heat. We've had trouble with Cassola in the unit, what with A.T.S. and local girls; married, some of 'em. You send him on a recce, the first thing he'll recce is a poke for himself.’

  ‘I'd better send Corporal Lewis to keep an eye on him.’

  ‘You are going to send Kulick and Cassola spying?’ Stuart sounded dubious.

  ‘I haven't decided. But I would like to know something about the garrison in Fort Jebel Asad; particularly about the C.O.’

  Sergeant Randall was at ease outside his pup tent, reclining on a blanket in the cool of the evening, smoking a cigarette and savouring a bottle of araq, the fierce Arab liquour that tasted of aniseed and was as strong as schnapps. He had obtained the araq from an Australian private, in exchange for a souvenir: a Commando badge, of which he had cannily brought several for barter.

  He had offered the bottle to his peers. Sergeant Quested was a tee-totaller, as Randall well knew, and had refused good-naturedly. Troop Sergeant Major Vowden had sniffed it and said he was sure it was paint-stripper and he didn't want to rot his guts.

  ‘Or merry-wasty,’ Randall had said: thinking he was saying ‘aur mere waste’.

  ‘What?’ Quested wrinkled his brows. He often did, for he was easily flummoxed.

  ‘Indoostanny. More for me'.’

  ‘What is it in Arabic, Bert?’ Vowden sounded mocking.

  ‘Akhtar ana.’ The response was immediate; but what it actually meant was gibberish: ‘More I’. It impressed Sergeant Randall's hearers, however.

  ‘What d'you reckon to this Jebel Akhdar, Bert?’ Sergeant Quested sounded quite respectful.

  ‘What I reckon, Ivor, it's going to be like on the Grim.’

  The others were familiar with the term. They had heard Randall use it often. It meant the North-West Frontier.

  ‘It's no Khyber Pass,’ Vowden said reasonably.

  ‘It bloody ain't, because there's nothing else in the world like the Khyber. But it'll be bare rocks, 'ot as 'ell and a bloody hard slog.’

  ‘It would have been a lot harder if Mr. Taggart hadn't told me to get rid of the mortars, and talked the Brigadier into letting us dump the Vickers.’

  ‘Mr. Taggart never talked anybody into anything.’ There was obvious admiration in Sergeant Randall's tone. ‘He's not one to waste words; nor are we, up North. I bet he as good as told the Brig it were a daft bloody notion and the Brig saw sense. I tell you straight, everyone's shit-scared of Brigadier Weatherhead; but me, I get the breeze up if Taggart just bloody looks at me, the way he can. Doesn't need to say a word.’

  Sergeant Quested nodded. It was a slow and ponderous affir
mation, in pace with his speech; and, most people suspected, his thought processes: but not that huge body, which could move like lightning and with amazing agility and grace. He could run the hundred yerda in eleven seconds, which was outstanding for a second-row forward with no pretensions to being a sprinter.

  ‘I know what you mean, Bert. He's got two or three ways of looking at you that make me shiver in my boots.’ (They were size 13.) ‘When he thinks you've done something downright stupid and looks at you old-fashioned. And when he's really angry and looks at you as though he'd like to scrape your skin off with a blunt knife; and would, given the chance.’

  ‘We're lucky to have him in command.’ There was no false praise or dutiful loyalty in the way that Troop Sergeant Major Vowden made the statement. ‘I've never served with him, but I've got pals who have. They reckon he's the best. Unfortunately, officers like him tend to get themselves killed sooner rather than later.’

  Randall sucked his teeth. ‘That's their business. It's going into action with a bloody officer who's likely to get me killed, as well as himself, that gives me the shits.’ He looked at Quested with a grin that was discernible in the faint moonlight. ‘You're welcome to Stuart.’

  Vowden spoke quickly, with a rasp. ‘Lieutenant Stuart's a good officer. The lads in his own unit like him. I know, because his section sergeant was in my regiment. I ran into him while I was on leave, just before coming to Scotland to instruct. He spoke well of Mr Stuart.’

  ‘I'll take Mr Gosland, any time.’ Randall's voice had the flat, disillusioned note of the old soldier who knew his superior would brook no criticism, but was stubbornly unyielding.

  ‘That's all right, then, Bert,’ said Vowden, ‘because you've got him.’

  ‘He comes from almost the right part of the world: right next door to County Durham.’ Randall was grinning again, and, under the benign influence of arak, sounded genial.

  ‘Despite being a Northener, he's a good chap.’ This was Quested's heavy (sic) jocularity and said with a chuckle.

  ***

  Corporals Owen, Nolan, Lewis and Irwin, and Lance Corporal Kulick sat and smoked while enjoying the beer they had saved for the cool of the late evening.

  Owen, who smoked a pipe, was neatly scraping the bowl of his Ropp cherrywood. When he spoke, it was in the faintly pedantic way that had so riled Private MacIntosh.

  ‘This job could be done with half the number of men: provided everyone carried twenty pounds of H.E. I could plant charges all round that fort and bring the whole thing crashing down on top of the Italians. Any survivors could be picked off by half a dozen Brens.’

  ‘You'd make pack-mules out of the rest of us, would you, Taffy?’ asked Nolan

  ‘I'd carry my share.’

  ‘That wasn't the point I was making. What you're saying is that all this operation needs is Welsh low cunning, and a lot of brawn provided by us lesser mortals.’

  ‘Now, Paddy, don't bring nationalities into this, or I'll tell a few Irish stories. Dhu, if they gave you the job of setting the charges, you'd be more likely to blow yourself up than the target.’

  ‘Ah, sure, and aren't the Irish grossly misunderstood, now. And here was I thinking I had an ally in a fellow Celt against all these Englishmen. But you're right: I don't mind my sub-section humping more than our fair share of H.E. — begorrah, aren't we used to doing more work than the rest of you? — but I never was one for fireworks as a kid. You can have the job of blowing the place up: I'll settle for shooting. Pity about Bob's mortars, though: it would have been great gas lobbing bombs over the wall into the Ities' laps.’

  ‘Not so much of the ‘hies’, Paddy.’ Lewis said it cheerfully, though. ‘‘Italians’, O.K.? For all I know, I may have second or third cousins in there, on the other side of that wall.’

  Irwin's pleasant Hampshire brogue: ‘What's the difference, Tony? You're going to shoot them when they come bolting out after Taffy's done his bit of demolition, aren't you?’

  ‘That's different: they've got a sporting chance of dodging the bullets, haven't they?’

  ‘No,’ said Irwin quietly. ‘And don't let the C.O. hear you say it. Remember: seize and ravage. The men in that fort are going to get no sort of chance, mate. We're going to obliterate the place and them with it. Those are the orders.’

  ‘Cassola's going to enjoy himself.’ Lewis said it with a half-laugh tinted with some disgust.

  ‘At least we can be sure he won't be squeamish about them being of his own blood,’ said Owen. ‘I'd feel more comfortable with that one if he did have that kind of emotions.’

  ‘I'm feeling emotional,’ said Corporal Nolan, who was something of a humorist, in a quiet way, as expected of the Irish; and felt that the topic needed changing. ‘Sure, couldn't I shed tears over losing Bob's mortars. I've been looking forward to dropping bombs onto the parade ground and seeing the Ities — sorry, Antonio, I mean the Italians — come pelting out to see what's going on.’

  ‘No offence,’ said Corporal Lewis, ‘They wouldn't have come running out, Paddy old chum, they'd have dived for the cellars: like sensible blokes. The Italians are great on self-preservation. It's my Jewish half that makes me the bold, wild fighting man that I'm sure you'll all agree I am.’

  Owen said, darkly, ‘Your best fighting's done horizontally with a blonde.’

  ‘And I'm proud of it.’ Lewis laughed. ‘You're just jealous.’

  ‘I'm married,’ Corporal Owen sounded gloomy about the fetter. ‘No aspersions on your mother's family, Tony, but it still seems to me we could wipe out this Fort Jebel Asad with half the troop: half of any Commando troop. There's only a half-company to contend with. It's an insult, really, to send an equal number of us: aren't we always being told we're elite troops?’

  Lance Corporal Kulick, who had been following the conversation with enjoyment, turning to look at each speaker, and whose presence they had forgotten, surprised them with his hoarse chortle.

  ‘Blimey,’ said Lewis, ‘Forgot you were there, Ali: it's your natural night camouflage that does it.’

  Kulick had been christened Alan and the abbreviation was a natural reference to his colour and Arab blood.

  ‘I'll tell you something, my friends: it's all very well to poke fun at the Italians; but there are some very tough men among them and some very tough units. I agree with you that most of them don't want to fight. Maybe they're the sensible ones and it's we and the Jerries who are crazy. I agree that the only time they win a battle is when they're up against half-naked tribesmen in Abyssinia and Eritrea, and even then they'd rather bomb them from the air than meet them in a fight. I agree the troops they sent to fight for Franco in the Spanish Civil War were of any use only against poorly-equipped and undisciplined civilians in uniform. But I do not agree that we can take it for granted the garrison in Fort Jebel Asad are necessarily gutless. I've been talking to some of the boys who've been brought back for a couple of days' rest. They admitted that one Italian regiment has put up a tough defence all the way. We'll find out more, soon: the C.O's going to send me into Tripoli in Arab clothes to find out as much as I can.’

  Lewis, who had been reclining, sat up. ‘Maybe he'll let me go in and pick up the Italian gossip.’

  Kulik's strange, grating laugh again. ‘You'd have to go in civvies, and you'd be picked up as a deserter, straight away.’

  ‘Well, that's a sod. I'd like to do some shopping. Hey, Ali, bring us back some feelthy pictures, anyway. And some nice Italian chocolate.’

  Kulik rumbled ‘Dirty postcards will only make it worse, having to live without women. I'll bring the chocolates instead. I tell you, in Scotland, I was beginning to look at the sheep with a lot of interest.’

  ‘You'll have to make do with a lady camel, here, Ali.’ Nolan told him. ‘ Sure, it's the sneer on a camel's face would be enough to put a fella off, now, wouldn't it.’

  This set off a train of scabrous conjecture that made the junior N.C.Os hilarious; and would have shocked the upright chu
rchman Sergeant Quested. Troop Sergeant Major Vowden heard their laughter and rejoiced: the lads seemed to be taking the raid with the light-heartedness one would expect of Commandos, the elite of the British Army, about to go into action against mere Wops.

  ***

  When X Troop boarded four three-ton lorries the next evening at nightfall, it was in the atmosphere of setting off on a spree. They had tested and proved their physical fitness during the preceding two days. They had enjoyed a last swim. They had fed sumptuously, for the three officers had borrowed a captured Italian scout car, taken rifles and shot three gazelles. The N.A.A.F.I. had unexpectedly produced a beer ration.

  All we need is Vera Lynn bawling ‘We'll Meet Again’, thought Taggart, and that would complete the holiday feeling.

  He was pleased by their high spirits, yet apprehensive of over-confidence: not that he had any respect for the particular enemy they were about to meet. His only anxieties were about the line of approach to the target and the method of attack. He had decided at once to ignore the Brigadier's instructions, just as he had defied him about the mortars. He would plan the attack for himself after he had seen the objective and surrounding terrain. He had no doubt at all that X Troop would rapidly demoralise the defenders and that once the gate or walls of the fort had been breached and the attackers were inside, the Italians would surrender without putting up any further opposition.

  What worried him was that over-confidence bred carelessness: waste of ammunition and other resources; contemptuous exposure which led to unnecessary casualties; rash acts which no soldier in his right mind would attempt against Germans. He would have to have a word with them. He did not doubt his own ability to find the mean between discouraging confidence and enterprise and fostering boldness and resolution. He had, after all, acquired as much experience of leading men into action in the past 18 months as most Regular officers did in as many years; if they were fortunate.