by Leo Kessler
Then he had it. He'd burn the swine out.
McLeod felt very weak now. His vision was blurred and he felt he might faint from loss of blood at any moment. He could see that his two companions were in no better shape. They had both been wounded once more in the last German attack, and the sergeant who had manned the Vickers had been particularly badly hit. The end of his long nose was white and pinched, a sure sign that he didn't have long to live. Still he stuck to his post. They'd die here, he told himself, but they'd make the Germans pay the price.
For a moment or two, as the small-arms battle gave way to desultory German sniper fire, his mind wandered and he remembered how it had been when he had first come out to Iraq straight from the trenches in France. It had been a revelation to get away from the mass slaughter of trench warfare, the eternal Northern French fog and drizzle, to this country of the glaring sun and the breathtaking heat.
In those days, they had all been a little like the legendary Lawrence of Arabia. He had been their hero and they had aped him in dress and habits. They had worn Arabic togs and eaten Arabic food, including sheep's eyes swallowed whole. Most of them had learned Arabic too, and had been advocates of the nomadic Arab way of life, aware of the distinction between them and the city dwellers who had tamely accepted the Turkish yoke and had been unprepared to fight for their freedom as the Arabs under Lawrence had done.
He – they – had been wrong of course. The Arabs, 'the sons of the desert', as the cheaper British newspapers had called them, had been just as vile and venal as their former Turkish masters. Lawrence, a terrible pervert, as they had discovered much later, had led him and all those keen, clean-living young Englishmen of that time astray. For nearly a decade the English Arabists and their diplomatic masters at the Foreign Office, who had subscribed wholeheartedly to the Arab cause, too, had been fooled into supporting the 'sons of the desert'. They had allowed them to build up their little kingdoms and principalities, while the oil discovered all the time in their remote desert wastes had become ever more important. Then these nomads, who, back in the early '20s, had been penniless illiterates living in their black tents, surrounded by a bunch of half-starved dependants they called their tribe, had begun to show their true selves. With British help they had gotten rid of the Turks. Now they wanted to rid themselves of the British, too, and they had been prepared to use any means to do so. Finally they had turned to the sworn enemies of the British Empire, Italy and Germany, and the same people who had sworn eternal friendship to those young idealistic British officers so long before, would now gladly stab them in the back if they could.
McLeod sighed. What a waste it had all been! What a waste, in reality, his own life had been too, year after year out here under the searing sun, which had burned the very sap out of him and had turned him into the ageing, embittered man he had become: a man without family, without a future, without interests, save these same hawk-nosed people whom he now detested. He sighed again. Perhaps it would be better if it ended here in battle. At least he'd go down fighting, instead of becoming some crusty old fogey, retired to Cheltenham, who wrote angry letters to The Times on subjects which interested no one.
"Sir." It was his sergeant.
"Yes?"
"They're coming again, sir. Near that bunch of camel thorn at three o'clock, sir."
Wearily, as if his head was worked by rusty springs, McLeod turned his head to the right and looked in the direction indicated by the NCO.
A couple of riflemen were advancing warily towards them, rifles at the ready, with, between them, another German, unarmed, it seemed, with his shoulders bent almost as if he were a hunchback.
Suddenly McLeod had it, though his brain was too exhausted for him to take in the full import of what he had just recognized: something he had not seen since it had frightened the living daylights out of him at the Third Battle of Ypres, back in '17. "Oh my God!" The exclamation came tumbling out of his abruptly gaping mouth involuntarily.
"What is it, sir?" the sergeant asked, busy tapping the antiquated Vickers machine gun round so that he could focus on the strange little party advancing upon them warily, obviously ready to hit the sand if they came under direct fire before they reached 'the dead ground', some fifty metres from the stalled armoured car.
McLeod could hardly bring himself to say the word, but he knew he had to. "Flame thrower!"
The sergeant took his hands away from the Vickers, shocked beyond belief, his sunburnt face abruptly ashen. "Holy Christ! A flame thrower, sir!"
McLeod wasted no more time; he knew he had none to waste. Once the flame-thrower party reached the dead ground, the three defenders would be finished. He jerked up his Tommy gun and pressed the trigger hard. Nothing!
He pressed the trigger again. Once more there was no response. The sub-machine gun lay impotent and silent in his hands. He had a stoppage.
Somehow the three Germans seemed to guess the defenders were in trouble. By now the Englishmen should have been firing at them. They wasted no time. "Alles für Deutschland!" Wildly they yelled the battle cry of the Armed SS, rushing forward, the deadly pack bouncing up and down on the back of the man in the middle. "Tod den Tommies!"
Crazily McLeod cried to the operator with the bloodstained bandage around his head. "Knock out the man in the middle... For God's sake!"
The operator fired. And again. Both his slugs missed, digging up spurts of sand at the SS men's flying feet. McLeod slammed the butt of his Tommy gun against the turret of the armoured car in one last desperate burst of rage and frustration. He fired the next instant. The stoppage was cleared. The weapon was working. Too late!
Gasping like ancient asthmatics in the throes of some final attack, the three Germans flung themselves full length into the dead ground. McLeod tensed for what was to come.
He didn't have to wait long. There was a sinister hiss. It was like some primeval monster emerging from the slime to utter its first fiery foetid breath. The very air seemed to tremble. A crack like a rod being struck against a hollow piece of metal. Next moment a blue, oil-tinged bar of flame swept out from the dead ground, seeking its prey.
McLeod felt the air being drawn from his lungs by that terrible, all consuming heat. Frantically he choked for breath. To his front the sand blackened at a tremendous rate as the spurt of flame ran towards them. It engulfed the front of the armoured car. The paintwork immediately spat and bubbled like the symptoms of some loathsome skin disease. McLeod dropped the useless gun; he'd need it no more. Next moment the flame had surrounded him, blinding him at once, the greedy little red fingers tearing at his flesh, blackening it and splitting it, the flesh beneath a cooked pink, and then it was all over and he was dead, and the Vulture was yelling his new order above the crackle of the dying flames. "We march west... SS Assault Battalion Wotan – move out!"
***
Jeeves was sitting in the sandbagged bar of the officers' mess, morosely contemplating the quarter of a bottle of Haig, when the news came. Outside, the Iraqi artillery was laying on a tremendous barrage and, with the enemy SS battalion on its way, he guessed that the last attack on Habbaniyah Base would commence within the next few hours – and that would be that. "Don't be vague, order Haig." He repeated the sales jingle of the whisky company, wondering if this last bottle would hold out to the end of the great siege. He wouldn't like to fall into Iraqi hands sober. "That would be very unwise – remember Kut," he said, half aloud, in the fashion of nearly drunk men who are beginning to wax philosophical. "Those men suffered at the hands of their captors."
It had been about then that young Adrian Smythe-Jones had strode into the bar, full of good cheer, his slightly weak face beaming. "Good news, sir!" he cried across the room, which in a proper pre-war regular RAF mess was not the done thing.
Jeeves frowned. He didn't like the pilot, with his 'Pilot Officer Prune' handlebar moustache and the top button of his tunic undone as if he were a survivor of the Battle of Britain, one of the bloody few, which he patently wasn't
– he was still in training. He spun round and snapped, "What do you mean – good news? There's no bloody good news left in this bloody world, young man."
The young pilot wasn't put out. "But there is, sir," he persisted. "Fifteen minutes ago, I buzzed the Hun column. The old kite wasn't up to bombing. She'd gone and got a poxed-up bomb – "
"For God's sake, get on with it!" Jeeves interrupted him angrily.
"Well, sir. They're off."
"Off where?"
"Heading west, well away from the base. To my way of thinking, they're on a westerly course for the Syrian frontier. Do you think I could have a beer, sir? My mouth's like a monkey's armpit."
"Have a bloody barrel, if there's that much left in the mess!" Jeeves cried exuberantly, for, as if to confirm the young pilot's information, the intense Iraqi artillery barrage had ceased with startling suddenness, leaving behind it a loud echoing silence.
It was only later, when the great news was spreading through the mess, and outside to the exhausted 'erks' who had been getting ready for the final battle, that Air Commodore Jeeves reminded himself to ask, "Any sign of Squadron Leader McLeod, Smythe-Jones?"
The young pilot raised his head from his pint glass, the foam dripping from his absurd moustache. "Not a sausage, sir," he answered a little thickly. "But I suppose he'll turn up sooner or later. You know these old Iraqi hands. They always come up smelling of roses, sir."
"Yes, I suppose you're right, young man," Jeeves agreed reluctantly. "Smelling of roses, what."
BOOK 6 – Defeat and Victory
CHAPTER 23
"Pas bon," the whore whispered, as Schulze shoved her against the wall. The gendarme patrol had just gone past and, seeing the big Legion soldier fumbling with the cheap tart against the wall of the prison, the cops had laughed, made a few obscene suggestions, and had gone on their way, certain that nothing suspicious was going on here. Now Schulze thought he might as well enjoy the whore before the fireworks started.
"Why pas bon?" he whispered hoarsely, proud of the newly learned French, but still eager to get at it 'like a fiddler's elbow' as well.
"You too big. Me too small," she answered. "I not accommodate you, chéri."
"Don't worry. I'll look after yer cherry," Schulze answered confidently. "Turn round." He grabbed the little tart by the hips, turned her round and flung up her skirt to reveal her plump naked buttocks. He slapped them lightly.
She giggled softly and whispered. "You naughty soldier."
"I'm gonna be naughtier," Schulze said, fumbling for his flies, "before long. Now hold still and prepare to take a chunk of honest German salami on board." She giggled again, as something hard and impatient started to press against her soft bottom.
Preoccupied as he was, Schulze could hear the soft noises at the end of the street all the same. It was his comrades, their spare pair of socks pulled over their boots to muffle the noise. It would be starting soon, but he was determined to get a little bit of the other before it did. As he had confessed to his running mate Corporal Matz before he had left the barracks with the whore Max had found for him, "She'll stand on her head naked on the Rue Principale for a handful of francs and something to sniff up her hooter. Yer never know, old house. I don't want to die a virgin."
He found it. He grunted and pushed harder. She giggled yet again and wriggled her buttocks like a teenager experiencing her first sex. "Old bag," Schulze muttered in his usual gentlemanly fashion, "keep frigging still till I get it all – "
It was at that very moment that a heavy weight landed on his broad back. Strong as an ox as Schulze was, he was caught by surprise and was thrust forward rudely. "Ooh-ee!" the whore cried in alarm as his organ thrust deep inside her. "My eyes, they pop!"
They popped again a second later as someone else landed on Schulze's back and followed Matz as he scrambled up the rough wall, heading for the roof of the prison. For the next few seconds, Schulze withstood the weight of several Legionnaires and Wotan troopers, as they used him as a kind of a bridge to assist them scale the wall. Finally he gave up, as the whore's knees gave way and she slumped to the cobbles, crying, "Ooh la, la. You Boche, what a salami!"
For a moment Schulze was undecided whether he should be angry or complimented by her remark. In the end, as Max whispered urgently, "Come on, you big ox, don't just stand there farting in the wind – we've got work to do," he decided he'd take the whore's remark as a compliment. Kissing her hand gallantly, he hissed into her ear, "Remain true to me, my beloved. I shall return and then I shall demonstrate to you, my little cabbage, the full range of the tricks that my good German salami can perform." And with that promise, he was scaling up the rough wall after the rest, to the flat roof where they were grouping, armed to the teeth, ready to break in.
Max and Schulze had drawn up the rescue plan together. Max, who had spent many a night, on account of drunkenness or similar petty crimes, in the place's cells, knew the prison intimately. He had pointed out right from the start that any attempt to go through the front entrance would result in severe casualties for the rescuers. The 'screws', as he called them, had a machine-gun post sited in the long tunnel which connected the outer and inner entrances to the cells. "If the screws are not drunk, as they usually are, they'll slaughter us."
Schulze had countered easily, "Well, Max, if we can't go through the front entrance, as the lady said, we'll have to do it through the back one." That had not proved possible, and in the end it had been Matz who had suggested the roof, "Cos the Frogs won't expect us coming from that way, will they?"
It had been a suggestion they had all accepted at once and without question, especially as Max had pointed out, "The screws reserve the upper-floor cells for the nutcases, you know." He had tapped his right temple. "For them suffering from the cafard. If there's any noise coming from that direction, the screws won't bother. There's always some poor mad swine up there minus all his cups in the cupboard, moaning and groaning and yelling his nut off."
Now the twenty or so rescuers – the rest were positioned all around the barracks, ready for the escape – set about breaking in through the roof. It wasn't a difficult task. Like most buildings in that part of the world, the flat roof had been repaired many times, mostly very carelessly, and, working as they were by the fitful silver light of the sickle moon, as it scudded in and out of the clouds, they soon found less solid patches into which they could get their knives and crowbars and lever up the flags.
Now, as a clock in the Christian part of the town started to chime three, they were ready to enter the prison, each man armed in his own fashion – clubs, rubber truncheons, brass knuckles, knives – waiting for Max's signal. For, as he knew the prison layout so well, he would guide the party to where von Dodenburg was imprisoned.
In his cell on the second floor, Kuno tensed as the third stroke of the clock died away. It left a noisy silence, a buzzing in his ears which he knew was the result of tension. He was concerned, but not only for himself, also for his men. They were risking everything to save him, and he had no illusions about what action Capitaine Herresbach, the swine, would take if the rescue attempt failed. He'd have the lot of them shot out of hand.
But he knew he must not think of failure. The attempt would succeed, and he would ensure that he did whatever he could to help the plotters. Now, with his shoes muffled by the socks he had drawn over them, he crossed to the place where he had hidden the makeshift knife. In reality it was a razor-sharp sliver of metal he had levered from the inside of the evil-smelling piss bucket at the cost of severe lacerations and two painfully broken fingernails. The hilt of the sliver he had wrapped in his vest to protect his hand from any further damage. The weapon was primitive, very primitive indeed. But it would suffice to put any unsuspecting warder out of action, if he attempted to keep him in the cell.
Now he stationed himself behind the door, straining his ears for the first suspicious sound of his rescuers, his hand gripping the makeshift knife, suddenly damp with perspiration, a nerve
ticking electrically at his temple. He started to count off the seconds, ready for the assault on the cell door. None came. "Great crap on the Christmas tree," he cursed to himself, full of impatience. "Where in three devils are you, Schulze?"
At that moment, Sergeant Schulze was facing an emaciated prisoner of obviously German origin, for he spoke German, who was totally naked and was barring the way out of the third floor, repeating over and over again, "You'll have to tickle me to get by, Adolf, come on now, tickle me, darling." The madman grinned, revealing in the poor yellow light of the single electric bulb of the corridor a mouthful of smashed and blackened teeth. Again he gave a kind of hop-and-skip dance, raising the dust of the floor as he did so, and repeated the formula, "You'll have to tickle me, Adolf... come on now, tickle me, darling." This time he blew a frustrated Schulze a wet kiss.
That did it. Schulze could wait no longer. "Come on," he snarled. "Come and be tickled, darling."
The crazy man's faded eyes lit up. "Do you mean it? Oh, I haven't been tickled for years now. Honest? You mean it?"
Schulze nodded. "Yes, I do," he answered, clubbing a fist like a small steam hammer. "Come on, be tickled."
As soon as the crazy man came within striking range, Schulze hit him, not particularly hard, but hard enough, straight on the point of his jaw. He went down as if poleaxed, with Matz catching him before he hit the ground, to lower him gently to the floor, saying as he did so, "Poor old soldier. Doesn't even get killed."
"Me heart bleeds," Schulze said unfeelingly. Next moment he'd stepped over the crazy man and was heading for the door that led out of the third floor and away from its crazies.
Now things moved swiftly. A couple of sleepy warders were discovered, heads bent wearily over their cards. They were dealt with quickly. Another was found in the latrine. He was pushed backwards and sank into the thunderbox, bubbling and puffing mightily as he disappeared into the yellow horror. "Don't bother, mate, you don't need to write," Schulze chortled happily, and then he and Max were heading for von Dodenburg's cell, fumbling with the keys they had taken from the unfortunate warder. They'd almost done it, and without a single casualty!
