Soldier G: The Desert Raiders

by Shaun Clarke

  ‘Charming people, the Italians,’ Stirling said, ‘but obviously as blind as bats.’

  ‘That’s why you’re charmed by them,’ Callaghan told him. ‘You think the Eyeties are harmless.’

  The column pressed on, now closed up in convoy formation, no longer spread out as a precaution against an air attack.

  ‘No point,’ Halliman explained. ‘We’re practically there.’

  They covered the last 20 miles without using their headlights, which made for a bumpy, dangerous ride. Eventually, as most of them suspected would happen, a bad combination of unseen pothole and soft sand led to another vehicle, the last in the convoy, being bogged down only 1600 yards from the DZ selected by Halliman.

  It was clear that it would take a long time to dig out the lorry.

  ‘Damn!’ Stirling exploded as a bunch of his men hurried to rescue the bogged-down vehicle with sand mats and steel channels. ‘This could cause complications.’

  ‘Damned right, it could,’ Callaghan replied. ‘It could take hours to dig out the bloody thing.’

  ‘And the pilot of that last Gibli,’ Halliman added, ‘is bound to alert his fellow Eyeries to our presence here. A change of plan is called for.’

  Standing upright in the rear of the Chevrolet, glancing at the darkening desert plain all around him, clearly boiling up with frustration, Stirling lit a consoling cigarette, blew a cloud of smoke, then nodded, as if at a ghost, and finally spoke.

  ‘Right!’ He turned to Callaghan. ‘If we fail to hit Sirte, we’ll attack at least one other airfield and the way to do that is to break up. There’s a new airfield at Tamit, about 30 miles west of here, and I want you, Paddy, to take eight men and hit it.’

  ‘Right, boss.’

  ‘Meanwhile, Sergeant Lorrimer and I will take a patrol on foot to raid Sirte.’

  ‘Sounds good to me, boss.’

  Stirling checked his watch, then looked up again. ‘We’ll both plan to set off our charges at 2300 hours tomorrow night. When that’s done, Sergeant Lorrimer and I will rendezvous with Captain Halliman back here. The other six lorries – three for each party – will pick up the rest of the raiders in the early hours of the next morning, Friday, and travel independently to the desert RV.’ He turned to Halliman. ‘Is this feasible?’

  Halliman shrugged. ‘Who dares wins,’ he said.

  10

  Before the two groups could separate, Corporal Mike Sadler, the LRDG navigator who had been checking their position with a combination of map reading and eyeball recce, returned to Halliman’s truck to say that they were far closer to the coast road than he had expected.

  ‘It’s lucky we didn’t go a further 1600 yards to the north,’ he said, ‘because there the road bends southwards in a way that isn’t shown on this bloody map.’

  ‘What does that mean?’ Stirling asked.

  ‘It means we’re practically on the perimeter of the Sirte airfield,’ Halliman said. ‘Practically in the lap of the Germans. It means they could be all around us already and we’d better be careful.’

  Even as he was speaking, he thought he heard a distant sound, so he used a hand signal – still just about visible in the evening’s dying light – to tell the other drivers to switch off their engines. When they did so, the distant sounds became clearer. First they heard barely distinguishable voices, then the growling of a road-patrol vehicle gathering speed as it moved off.

  ‘That confirms it,’ Halliman said. ‘Those Gibli pilots have reported our presence in the area and Jerry’s now on the alert for a raid against the traffic going along that sea road.’

  ‘It’s a Jerry MSR,’ Sergeant Lorrimer reminded them, ‘so they’re bound to be doubly concerned.’

  ‘Then we’d better get started,’ Stirling said. ‘Get this over and done with before they launch a full-scale search.’ He turned to Lorrimer. ‘I don’t want any tell-tale footprints showing that we separated from the main patrol and headed for Sirte, so let’s get ready to jump off a good distance from here, where Jerry’s not likely to look for us. Let’s get on the running board.’

  ‘Right, boss.’ Even as Sadler turned on the ignition and moved off, Lorrimer was clambering over the side to stand on the narrow running board and cling to the door. Because he was carrying a bag of Lewes bombs and fuses, as well as his heavy rucksack, this was more precarious for him than it was for Stirling. As the Chevrolet picked up speed, followed by the others, Stirling did the same at the other side of the vehicle, hanging on precariously and being dragged down by his rucksack while also being whipped by the snapping slipstream.

  When the lorry was a good half mile from where the patrol had stopped, still travelling at a mere 15 mph and heading west for the new airfield at Tamit, Stirling shouted, ‘Now!’ He then threw his carefully wrapped Sten gun to the ground and jumped off the running board.

  His parachute training stood him in good stead. Deliberately bending his legs when his feet touched the ground, he let his body relax, tried not to resist the impact, and rolled over a few times, choking in the dust created by his fall, but otherwise unharmed. When he picked himself up, resting there on his knees, he saw Lorrimer doing the same a few yards away. As the sergeant clambered to his feet, brushing the dust off his clothing, he was wearing a big, cheesy grin.

  ‘I’m getting too old for this,’ he said, ‘but that made me feel like a schoolboy.’

  ‘Me, too,’ Stirling said. Looking west, he saw the last of the trucks of SI patrol, already obscured by dust boiling up in their wake, then eventually disappearing into the darkness.

  ‘Best of luck,’ he murmured, then he and Lorrimer looked around for their weapons and the bag of Lewes bombs. After finding them, they removed the padded wrapping from the weapons and cleaned them thoroughly. This done, Lorrimer picked up the bag of Lewes bombs and fuses, then nodded at Stirling. ‘Let’s go,’ said the latter.

  They hiked side by side through the growing darkness, being careful to stay low and listening intently for the sounds of German patrols. The desert plain was hard, a pale white in the moonlit darkness, its flat surface running out to an escarpment overlooking the Mediterranean. It was covered with a fine film of dust, stirred by the wind blowing in from the sea and constantly drifting.

  Suddenly, coming up over a low ridge, they saw a group of Italian soldiers marching along in file formation on routine patrol. Throwing themselves to the ground, they waited for the patrol to pass, a mere 15 yards away. Climbing to their feet again, the two SAS men hurried off in the opposite direction, heading away from the escarpment overlooking the sea, down the northern slope, towards the Sirte airfield.

  Being much closer to the airfield than they had expected, practically on its perimeter, they soon found themselves making their way between its outer buildings which, to their surprise, were neither fenced in nor guarded. Once past the buildings, they came to the dispersal area, again without hindrance, where they saw a row of unguarded Axis aircraft.

  ‘Italian Capronis,’ Lorrimer whispered.

  ‘Very nice, too,’ Stirling said. ‘Just waiting for a necklace of Lewes bombs and a baptism of fire and smoke.’

  ‘They’re certainly tempting,’ Lorrimer whispered. ‘Why not do it right now?’

  ‘Because by blowing them up now we’d alert them to what we’re up to and jeopardize S1’s chance of success at Tamit.’

  ‘So what do we do in the meantime?’

  ‘We recce the airfield and plan tomorrow’s raid, then we get the hell out of here and find a safe hide.’

  ‘Sounds fair enough to me, boss.’

  After counting the aircraft – there were thirty in all – they moved on, circling the airfield and taking note of anything that might help them when they returned as raiders. They saw the odd German guard here and there, wandering lazily to and fro, rifles slung across their shoulders, but they all seemed half asleep and the recce was completed without problems.

  Until, on the way back out of the airfield, Stirling st
umbled over the body of an Italian sentry sleeping on the ground.

  The man jerked upright automatically, throwing off his blanket. Seeing Stirling and Lorrimer, he yelled a warning, alerting the whole garrison, then reached frantically for his rifle. Stirling kicked the weapon out of the Italian’s reach, then he and Lorrimer ran like the wind back the way they had come.

  The snap of a firing semi-automatic rifle behind them was followed by the sound of bullets whipping past their heads as the guard they had awakened fired after them. To avoid the rifle fire, they made a sharp left, rolled down a dip in the upward slope, then climbed back to their feet and ran on towards the escarpment. The sentry behind them stopped firing – probably to run back towards the airfield to tell his friends which way the Englishmen had gone.

  As Stirling and Lorrimer were hurrying up the slope north of the airfield, sirens started to wail and the guns of the garrison, large and small, began firing out to sea. This noisy barrage soon developed into a full-blown shadow fire-fight as the men in the garrison tried to prevent an imagined assault from the sea or, even worse in their view, from enemy troops advancing inland. The tracers from their anti-aircraft guns looped in beautiful, phosphorescent-purple lines towards the sea, crisscrossing in the dark sky, exploding in black clouds of flak above the water just beyond the escarpment. To the initial clamour of the big guns was added the savage roar of numerous machine-guns and, in one instance of obvious panic, the distant thud of a firing mortar whose shell exploded with a mighty eruption of earth and smoke further down the slope.

  Once on the hillside, Stirling and Lorrimer turned east and zigzagged along the edge of the escarpment, under an umbrella of tracer and exploding flak, until they were well away from where the guard would have reckoned them to be. Eventually, feeling safer, they crawled into a patch of bushes, carefully covered themselves with foliage, and watched the rest of the spectacular, colourful fire-fight directed at a non-existent invasion force.

  ‘We really stirred up a hornet’s nest there,’ Lorrimer said with a grin.

  ‘Yes,’ Stirling replied. ‘They can’t work out if we’re attacking by air, sea or land, but they certainly think we’ve arrived.’

  ‘Do you think they’ll come out to find us?’

  ‘No. I think they’ll dig in, reinforce their defensive positions and wait for the assault they imagine is about to commence. We’re probably fairly safe here.’

  ‘But we’re stuck here until tomorrow night.’

  ‘I could do with a good sleep,’ Stirling said, ‘and that’s what I’m going to have.’

  He turned on his side, tugged the foliage closer over him, used his rucksack as a pillow and went to sleep quickly. Sighing, thinking he could not possibly sleep in such circumstances, Lorrimer nevertheless did the same, though with his body bent up in a foetal position, wrapped around the bag of Lewes bombs and fuses.

  In fact, he too fell asleep within minutes of the end of the firing from the airfield, which left a vast silence only broken by the distant murmur of the sea. The sergeant slept like a log.

  When he awoke, just after dawn, Lorrimer found Stirling already awake and scanning the surrounding area with his binoculars. Now, in the early morning light, they found themselves with a good view of the beach dunes to the north, the white houses of Sirte to the west, and, most importantly, their targets at the bottom of the escarpment.

  After studying the airfield with some care, Stirling lowered the binoculars and turned to Lorrimer. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘I don’t think we can approach the airfield the same way tonight. Every gun in the garrison is probably aimed in that direction. Instead, I suggest we approach by their eastern flank, directly down this hill, sneaking in from the side. Agreed?’

  ‘Agreed.’

  Stirling smiled. ‘You still look tired, Sergeant.’

  ‘We only slept a couple of hours.’

  ‘That’s true enough. My own eyes feel as heavy as lead, so I think I’ll rest them again. I strongly recommend you do the same. You’ll wake refreshed.’

  ‘I couldn’t possibly wake feeling worse, so I’ll take your advice.’

  Having selected the route by which they would get to the thirty aircraft that night, both men stretched out once more and went back to sleep.

  11

  They were awoken by the sound of voices and looked up at the same time, seeing only the dazzling azure sky and realizing, from the height of the sun, as well as the appalling heat, that it was still only noon. Not saying a word and trying to move as little as possible, they turned their heads in the direction of the voices and saw two Arab girls, both wearing black veils, stooped over as they toiled with mattocks on one of the few cultivated patches of fertile earth in the surrounding desert.

  Stirling and Lorrimer glanced at one another, but again said nothing, fearful that the two girls would hear them. Again studying the girls, they saw that they were intent on their work and had no idea of the presence of two men hiding under the hedges behind them. Unfortunately, there was nothing that Stirling and Lorrimer could do other than wait until the girls had finished their work and left. That could be a long wait.

  In fact, it was three hours, during which time Stirling and Lorrimer were forced to lie motionless in their hide, making not a sound, trying not to sneeze, unable even to flex their cramped muscles or relieve their straining bowels. Eventually, however, in the late afternoon, the girls finished work and departed.

  ‘Thank Christ for that,’ Stirling said, stretching his long body, flexing his muscles and taking deep breaths to encourage a general relaxation. ‘I thought they would never leave.’

  ‘They may have left too late,’ Lorrimer replied, pointing at the sky.

  Glancing over his shoulder and instantly despairing, Stirling saw that the Italian Capronis were taking off from the airfield and heading inland. They were lifting off two or three at a time and soon an awful lot of them were airborne.

  ‘Oh, damn!’ he exclaimed softly. ‘I don’t believe it!’

  ‘They must be flying to the front,’ Lorrimer said, ‘to make night attacks against our transports. There go our targets.’

  This much was true. As Stirling and Lorrimer looked on in horrified fascination, all the aircraft they had come so far to destroy took off and disappeared beyond the horizon. So agitated was Stirling that he counted them off as they left – ‘Fifteen … seventeen … twenty … twenty-three …’ – mouthing the words silently, in despair, until he had counted a total of thirty and then there were no more.

  Every single Caproni spotted on the runway had flown away, leaving nothing to attack. They had gone there for nothing.

  Stirling’s silent gestures spoke eloquently of his despair. He simply dropped his forehead onto his crooked arm and let it rest there for some time as he took deep, even breaths, trying to soothe his racing heart and subdue his frustration. He remained like that for a long time, as if frozen by dejection, then eventually raised his head again and glanced at the sky, then all around him and finally at Lorrimer.

  ‘I’m think I’m going crazy,’ he said. ‘I simply cannot accept this.’

  ‘You were always crazy, boss,’ Lorrimer replied, ‘but you’ll just have to accept it. Our targets have gone.’

  Lying belly-down, Stirling rested one elbow on the ground, cupped his chin in his hand and gazed first out to sea, then west to the blood-red sun just above the desert’s horizon. He stayed in that position for some time, as inscrutable as the Sphinx, then finally sighed, raised himself to his knees and spread his hands as if releasing a trapped bird.

  ‘No use crying over spilt milk,’ he said. ‘Let’s just pray that the others do better than we did. As for us, we might as well go back to the RV and wait for Captain Halliman to pick us up. Not much else to do, is there?’

  ‘Not really,’ Lorrimer said, though not without noting the acute disappointment in Stirling’s voice. ‘It’s the luck of the draw, boss.’

  After slinging their rucksacks onto
their backs, and with Lorrimer again carrying the bag of Lewes bombs and fuses, they headed back to the road in the fading light. Feeling the weight of Stirling’s despondency as they made the short hike, Lorrimer was relieved when they reached the road in darkness, just before midnight, and saw flashes and the glow of fires in the far distance, illuminating the western horizon.

  ‘That’s Captain Callaghan’s group,’ he told Stirling, filling up with excitement. ‘Tamit’s on fire!’

  ‘They’ve succeeded,’ Stirling replied, looking as if he wanted to sprout wings and fly. ‘Those flashes are bombs going off. It wasn’t all wasted, Sergeant!’

  Impulsively, they hugged one another, then, getting their senses back, hurried to hide by the side of the road before any Axis traffic came along and saw them.

  ‘Damn it,’ Stirling said, ‘I can hardly contain myself. We can’t just sit here and watch those bombs going off on Tamit airfield. We’ve got to do something.’

  Lorrimer glanced up and down the dark road, looking for oncoming Axis traffic. When he saw that nothing was coming, he patted the heavy bag at his feet.

  ‘I have a couple of small land-mines here,’ he said, ‘so let’s plant the buggers.’

  ‘Better than carrying them back,’ Stirling responded. ‘Yes, damn it, let’s do it!’

  While Stirling kept watch, Lorrimer unpacked the three small land-mines he had been carrying with the Lewes bombs. After scooping out enough earth to bury them slightly and cover them up again, he spaced them out at equal distances across the road. No traffic came along as he was doing this and soon he was back beside Stirling, hiding in a dip between the road and the desert.