Death or Glory I: The Last Commando: The Last Commando

by Michael Asher

  The slope itself was covered in stunted camel-thorn and hummocks of esparto grass: cheese-grater terrain, sweeping down in long screes, hollows, sandspits, loose, jagged stones, fractured crags. There was a good defensive line about twenty yards from the top where they could pile rocks into sangars and dig shallow shell-scrapes. Caine frowned, knowing that this last job was going to require enormous effort. The surface was already hot enough to fry an egg. He swallowed hard, knowing that there wasn't much time: the menacing brown cloud still lay on the distant horizon.

  They withdrew back to the leaguer, where Caine held a dispirited O group in the shadow of the rocks. The men looked hot, worn out and dejected: no one had spotted any sign. All the way across the desert they'd anticipated encountering a well-equipped LRDG squadron – wagons manned by fresh troops, bristling with machine guns, mortars and even a Bofors gun to keep off the aircraft, their boards crammed with food and drink.

  It was true that they'd been late for the RV, but there was nothing to suggest that an LRDG patrol had been and gone. Caine's worst fears were confirmed: no one was coming for them. The Runefish mission had been dumped.

  ‘We've got a problem, boys,’ he informed them. ‘The enemy is closing in on us, and we don't have the petrol to outrun them.’ He took a deep breath and continued, hacking words out of stone. ‘As you can see, the LRDG patrol we expected hasn't turned up. We don't know the situation in Egypt – the last we heard from the wireless, Rommel was massing his forces on the border. Our LRDG patrol may have been bumped on the way, or it may not have been dispatched at all.’

  He let this sink in, then said, ‘As I see it, gentlemen, we've got three choices. One, we wait for Jerry and surrender. Two, we break up into small parties and trog back to Egypt on foot. Three, we dig in on this ridge and fight it out with the Hun. I'm not going to give any orders. I'll give my opinion, but the choice is up to you.’

  There was a moment's silence. The commandos lit cigarettes and weighed up his words. Rose's sea-green eyes searched Caine's face as if some answer might be written there. Adud and Layla sat next to her, quietly smoking.

  It was Maurice Pickney who broke the silence. ‘If we surrender,’ he said, ‘they have to offer us our rights as POWs. I hate to be the one to say it, but somebody's got to. We did our best, but we always knew the chances of getting through this were thin. Luck was against us. No one wants to be a prisoner, but it makes more sense to surrender, to take our chance to escape and fight another day, than it does to get scragged for nothing.’

  Pickney's declaration was met by boos and raspberries. Caine held up his hand. ‘There's nothing wrong with Maurice's opinion,’ he said, his sand-scoured eyes on the medical orderly's wizened features. ‘If my experience in Biska had been different, Maurice, I might agree. But this lot behind us aren't Afrika Korps, they're Abwehr troops. They're under the command of Heinrich Rohde who, as far as I can make out, is already a war criminal. He was responsible for the mutilation and death of Moshe Naiman at Biska, and only missed doing me and Miss Rose in by a whisper. Frankly, if we surrender to him I don't hold out much hope, especially for Maddy here.’

  The men gaped bug-eyed from Caine to Rose: this was the first time Caine had talked openly to the whole unit about what had happened at Biska. Rose made a rude face at them. ‘Leave me out of this, Tom,’ she said. ‘I'll take my chances.’

  Caine touched the dressing on his side: his wound was still painful. ‘It's not just for you, it's for me, and all of us. I wouldn't want to go through one of the Black Widow's torture sessions again, and I wouldn't want myself, you, or any man here, to die like Moshe Naiman…’

  Harry Copeland groaned suddenly, and the others stared at him. Caine guessed he was thinking about Angela – wondering what her fate would be if Rohde had laid his hands on her.

  ‘What about the escape-and-evasion option?’ Flash Murray said, covering up Cope's embarassment. ‘It's not impossible. When the LRDG got bumped by the Ities near Kufra, one chap walked two hundred miles back across the desert.’

  ‘We'll never make it,’ Copeland said, scratching his blond fuzz. ‘It's summer. It's bloody hot, and we've got hardly any water, and no rations. We don't even know if we have any lines to walk back to.’

  ‘I'm for making a stand here,’ Wallace cut in. ‘We've taken on bigger outfits before, and we came up trumps. We can do it again. Let's whack into 'em with everything we've got, pinch their wagons, head for the Wire.’

  ‘It's not going to be that easy, Fred,’ Pickney said. ‘Last time, we had the element of surprise. We don't have it any more. When the Hun drives up that wadi, he'll be ready for us.’

  Caine was deep in thought. ‘What this needs,’ he declared suddenly, ‘is a Sapper's solution.’

  ‘Mines,’ Cope nodded.

  ‘That's it,’ Caine said. ‘We've got about thirty No. 2 landmines and some Hawkins bombs. There's no other way for the Hun to approach us than up that wadi. We'll sow a patch of it with mines – we could even make a grenade daisy-chain to supplement them. Rohde might be ready for us, but he won't be expecting to hit a minefield.’

  Cope's dazzling blue eyes lit up abruptly. ‘What we need is a decoy to lure them on,’ he said, leaning forward. ‘How about posting the Dingo at the mouth of the wadi? The Huns clock her, they give chase, she leads them into the minefield. We'll make a path through it that only the Dingo driver can see.’

  ‘We could dig sangars on this slope, and lay the grenade daisy-chain along the lower skirts.’ Wingnut Turner joined in. ‘The Huns who survive the minefield blast will rush our position uphill. One of us lies hidden, waits till they've gone past and sets off the daisy-chain just as they go into the assault – boom, bodies fly, we open up on the rest with Vickers and Brens… We'll wipe 'em out just like we did on the Benghazi Road…’

  ‘Just a sec,’ Taffy Trubman cut in, pressing his thick glasses nervously with a pudgy hand. ‘The column we banjoed on the road didn't have air support. This time they do…’

  Caine shook his head. ‘I'm not sure about that, Taffy. I think they might want us alive, or at least want Miss Rose alive. Maybe that's why they called off the bandits this morning. Even if they use aircraft, I don't reckon they'll hit us full whack.’

  ‘The question is,’ Pickney said, ‘who's going to drive the Dingo?’

  Wallace raised a hand the size of a small frying-pan. ‘I am,’ he said.

  Copeland guffawed. ‘No you aren't, you great knucklehead. You've never driven a Dingo in your life. You wouldn't know which gears were forward and which reverse. No, if anyone's going to do it, it's me – I'm an ex-Service Corps driver and…’

  ‘No,’ Caine said, shaking his head. ‘I need your skills as a planner, Harry. And he's right, Fred, you don't have much experience with the Dingo.’

  ‘It ought to be me,’ George Padstowe announced modestly. ‘I think Taffy Trubman and I have clocked up the most hours in the Dingo.’

  Caine considered it for a moment. ‘All right,’ he said. ‘You and Wingnut will lay the No. 2 mines, the Hawkinses and the daisy-chain. You'll do the decoy, George. Wingnut, you'll lie in hiding with the daisy-chain igniter.’ He glanced at Turner. ‘That all right with you?’

  The cadaverous RAOC man beamed, remembering how he'd been left out of the action during the fight at Umm 'Aijil. ‘Right you are, skipper,’ he said. ‘The Hawkins bombs won't penetrate thick armour, but they'll blow off tracks or wheels. We'll fit sordo rubbers to the No. 2 mines – that means we'll be able to lay them within two feet of each other without sympathetic detonation.’

  ‘Good,’ Caine said. ‘We'll have to hope that the Huns don't come in waves, though, because we've only got enough ordnance for one good crack.’

  ‘Just watch those Hawkinses,’ Wallace said. ‘I never trusted that crush igniter system.’

  The giant looked around to see Copeland and Caine both smirking at him. ‘What?’ he demanded. He paused and glared almost threateningly around at the small c
ompany. ‘Well, have we decided or not?’

  Caine searched the men's faces. They nodded in agreement one by one – Pickney alone remained uncertain. ‘Listen,’ he said. ‘There are only eleven of us…’

  ‘Twelve,’ Rose cut in sharply.

  Pickney screwed up his face. ‘All right, I meant eleven combatants. How the fuck can eleven shagged-out men take on a large force of Axis troops with armoured vehicles and possibly even air support? It's just not on.’

  Wallace preened his cliff-like chest. ‘We're commandos, ain't we?’ he said.

  Copeland chuckled a little disdainfully, and shook his head at Pickney. ‘Another chap who doesn't know his history,’ he said. ‘Ever hear of the battle of Thermopylae, Maurice? Three hundred Spartans used a narrow gorge like this one to hold off a Persian army fifty-thousand strong. This place favours a few defenders, like Thermopylae – it's just a matter of how you use the ground.’

  ‘I've been to school, mate,’ Pickney said, looking offended, ‘and you're only telling half the story. Three hundred Spartans might have held back the entire Persian army at Thermopylae. The way I remember it, though, it wasn't such a great victory. Every bloody one of them was wiped out.’

  44

  The O Group was broken up by Caine's reminder that if they didn't get on with it they'd be wiped out sitting on their arses. The commandos leapt into frenetic activity. Turner and Padstowe loaded the Dingo with twenty pan-sized No. 2 mines, fifteen Hawkins bombs, boxes of Mills pineapples and a huge coil of fuse wire. As they eased the AFV down the slope, the rest of the men lined up at the back of the White to collect weaponry and ammo. In addition to his personal weapons, each man was issued a Bren-gun and a thousand rounds of ammunition. Some were given two-inch mortars and bags of bombs: everyone got a haversack of Mills grenades, a bayonet, an entrenching tool and as many bottles of water as could be spared. Pickney doled out the last of the Benzedrine tabs; Caine designated a defensive position for each man in a dog's-leg line across the hillside, then sent them off to construct sangars.

  Flash Murray would man the 20mm gun on the Daimler on the extreme right of the line. Caine located a natural depression on the slope there that would serve as a berm, and had Murray manoeuvre the AFV into hull-down position. There was a clear field of fire directly down the gorge. Fred Wallace had removed the twin Vickers from their pintle-mounts on the Dingo and White, and set about mounting them on tripods. The Vickers would be braced by Wallace, Graveman, Copeland and Caine. The White would play no direct part in the battle: Caine decided to hide her in a depression behind the Daimler.

  The weapons had been handed out, and the men were digging their scrapes and piling up stones. Caine was about to shut up shop when Rose jabbed his arm. ‘What about me?’ she demanded, her long eyelashes quivering.

  ‘You're a non-combatant,’ Caine told her gruffly. ‘I want you to go off with Layla and Adud. Try to reach a Senussi camp, hole up there until you can make contact with British intelligence agents operating undercover in the hills.’

  ‘A non-combatant?’ Rose repeated, pouting her full lips. She grabbed the Bren-gun Caine had set aside for himself, fell into a prone position, cleared the weapon fast and with perfect precision, snapped on a magazine, ratcheted the first round into the chamber and made safe. Caine's face dropped with surprise. ‘You've fired a Bren before?’

  Rose laughed up at him. ‘I'm a marksman with Bren, .303 Lee-Enfield, Tommy-gun and .45-calibre Colt pistol – oh, and the Gewehr 41 semi-auto and the Beretta SMG as well. I've never missed the target with a single round on any of 'em. Fully small-arms trained.’

  ‘What else did they teach you on that Courier's Course?’ Caine enquired. ‘You're a trained parachutist, a medical orderly, W/T op, and a small-arms expert?’

  ‘I'm also trained in demolitions, subversion, intelligence-gathering, unarmed combat – and mental techniques.’ She laid down the Bren's stock, set the weapon's carrying handle at an angle as per strict weapons-drill practice, and stood up, dusting herself off.

  Caine watched her warily. ‘Mental techniques?’ he echoed. ‘You mean like mesmerism, that kind of stuff?’

  Rose nodded. ‘Sort of.’

  ‘Like how you stopped everything back there with Michele, just by saying “Stop”? The way you ordered us around in the guardroom at Biska?’

  ‘They call that the Voice,’ Rose agreed softly. ‘Yes, it's a mental weapon. You can project authority by speaking in a certain tone.’

  Caine found himself glowering at her. ‘In that case, it's a pity you didn't use the Voice on that bastard Rohde instead of blabbing your mouth off, flushing the whole Eighth Army down the toilet.’

  Rose lost her smile: her head and shoulders drooped. Caine thought he detected the faintest glimmer of tears at the corners of her eyes. ‘You haven't got a very high opinion of me, have you, Tom?’ she whispered.

  ‘I just don't get you,’ Caine said, irritated. ‘You've got guts, yet you collapsed under interrogation and blew intelligence that might cost us the entire campaign. You're so taken up in your personal tragedy that you don't even seem bothered about ours.’ He shot her a hard glance. ‘I mean, if you wanted to die so badly, instead of spilling your guts, why didn't you just swallow that cyanide pill and get it over with?’

  Caine knew before the words were out that it was a vicious thing to have said. Rose's face caved in and she put her arms round him, hugging him. He was so surprised that he forgot to resist. Her mouth was close to his now, her lips parted, showing those two beautifully overlapping front teeth, her eyes tank-slits, almost closed. Caine felt the soft curves of her body fitting perfectly into his, felt her warm breath on his face, experienced an explosion of desire that seemed to crash like a tidal wave across his whole body. He'd always been told that proximity to death made men horny, but this feeling was savage, powerful, like the awakening of some great sleeping dragon in his body. He felt like crushing her to him, tearing off her clothes, making violent love to her right then and there. He shivered, awed at the force of the sensation, wrestling with the craving that threatened to sweep him away. ‘It's been really lonely,’ Rose whispered. ‘You don't know how lonely it's been. These last two days – being with you – it's made a difference. All right, maybe I am more than what I said… maybe I couldn't tell you the whole truth, but I –’

  ‘Where do you want these Vickers placed, skipper,’ Wallace's voice croaked.

  Out of the trail of his eye, Caine saw the giant towering over him, hefting a Vickers ‘K’ on its tripod. A guillotine blade chunked down on his feelings: desire drained away on an ebb-tide. Caine ignored Wallace and broke from Rose's embrace, panting slightly, still gazing into her eyes. ‘Look,’ he said. ‘My mission was to bring you back or execute you. I've failed in the first and I'm past doing the second. Get out of here while you can. If things had been different…’

  Rose wiped tears out of her eyes and when she spoke her voice had regained its stiffness. ‘You know, Sergeant, the bottom line is that I outrank you, and you can't order me to go.’ She bent down, picked up the Bren with both hands and glared at him, her flashbulb eyes challenging. ‘For better or for worse, I'm staying here with you.’

  ‘Hey,’ Wallace yelled, a grin like a knife-wound slashing his stony features. ‘That sounded like a marriage proposal to me, skipper.’ He dumped the big Vickers on its three legs, wiped sweat off his brow with a tattooed forearm. ‘Anyhow, seems a waste. We could do with anyone capable of handling a weapon.’

  Caine shot his mate an exasperated glance. ‘Fred, she may be an officer, but she's also a woman. It's against regs for women to fight as combatants in this campaign.’

  ‘Funny,’ Wallace honked. ‘I ain't seen no Regulations Manual round here, have you? What I seen is a bint – sorry ma'am, an officer – who knows her way round a Bren-gun, and only eleven of us against about sixteen divisions of Jerries who'll be here any minute.’

  His jovial manner vanished suddenly, and his black-
pinned eyes bored into Caine. ‘You spent your life treating women like they was precious flowers, Tom, but you can't go on doing that for ever. It's like you think they're a different species or summat. Respect means treating 'em like real grown-up people, too. Anyway, seeing as how she's the same rank as a major, and you're a buckshee sergeant, I don't reckon there's much you can do about it.’

  Rose winked at Wallace. Caine looked at the big man in surprise. This was about the most profound dose of homespun wisdom Wallace had ever come out with, and the simple truth of his mate's words sank in slowly. He felt awkward to have been confronted with such truths in front of Rose, and was tempted to relieve the pressure by throwing up a sharp salute and saying, ‘Very good, ma'am,’ in his most sarcastic tone. Instead he just nodded at her, accepting defeat. ‘All right then,’ he said. ‘Collect your weapons and let's do it.’

  Adud and Layla were almost equally reluctant to quit the battle, but Caine insisted that they make their way around the pass and head for the nearest Senussi settlement. If the worst came to the worst, they wouldn't be implicated. Adud argued, but when he saw that Caine wouldn't budge, he beckoned his daughter and they left without ceremony, stalking off silently into the open desert.

  Caine busied himself with building his own sangar on the extreme left of the line. There wasn't time to dig a proper shell-scrape – a shallow trench with a wall of solid boulders around it would have to do. Pausing from the work, he saw the Dingo pull up at the base of the scarp – Padstowe and Turner fresh from mine-laying. The two men jumped out, saw him looking down from far above, and gave him the thumbs-up. They set about stringing grenades on instantaneous fuse, burying them across the lower quarter of the escarpment.