by Shaun Clarke
‘Hear, hear,’ Callaghan said.
‘Here are just a few of the things that went wrong,’ Stirling continued, counting them off on the fingers of his right hand. ‘Some of our targets flew away before we could get at them. We had no idea if the airfields we targeted were guarded or not. Captain Lewes turned up at an airfield that was, in fact, merely a staging post containing no aircraft. We should have known these facts in advance.’
‘Right,’ Lewes said.
‘Another damaging delay was caused by the simple fact that two Arab girls decided to tend their garden. This also could have been avoided with prior intelligence. In short, we should have known about that garden.’ Stirling glanced at each of the men in turn, letting them know he was serious. ‘And there were, alas, other silly mistakes.’
The officers glanced uneasily at one another when Stirling deliberately paused for dramatic effect.
‘Captain Callaghan, for instance, made the mistake of firing at the enemy before his men had planted their bombs, thus alerting the garrison to what his group was doing.’
‘Sorry about that,’ Callaghan said. ‘I just got carried away.’
‘Please don’t let it happen again, Paddy.’
‘I won’t, boss, I promise.’
‘Captain Lewes ignored the advice of his experienced LRDG sergeant and took a vehicle unsuited to the terrain.’
‘Guilty,’ Lewes said. ‘I stand corrected.’
‘He also engaged the enemy before planting his bombs, thus running the risk of alerting them to what was happening. In his case, the circumstances were mitigating, but again, if we’d had proper intelligence, he wouldn’t have turned up at an empty airstrip and had to go elsewhere.’
This time Lewes made no comment.
‘Regarding the timing of the raids, in future we’ll also have to make allowance for the unexpected, such as the sandstorm that delayed Captain Lewes’s patrol.’
‘A terrible experience,’ Lewes said, ‘albeit a brief one.’
‘As for myself,’ Stirling continued, ‘I must confess that I was careless enough to trip over an Italian sentry who then alerted the whole damned garrison. Had that not happened, we might have attacked the airfield earlier and the planes would not have flown away before we could get to them. I believe this happened because I was too tired – but I shouldn’t have been. I should have laid up the night before the raid to ensure that I was fully alert. I, too, stand corrected.’
His fellow officers smiled at that.
‘So,’ Stirling summarized, ‘in future, whenever possible, a number of guidelines will be followed. No raids will be mounted until the targets have been fully recced and accurate intelligence is received. No recces will be made without a day’s lying-up before the raid. The raiders will not engage in gun battles before they’ve planted their bombs. The fuses of the bombs will be double-checked for precise timings. The number of targets must be accurately ascertained and no patrol will have a shortage of bombs. All future schedules will incorporate allowances for unexpected desert phenomena, such as sandstorms and the bogging down of vehicles. Last but not least, with regard to being shot at by our own bloody aircraft, the pros and cons of disguised vehicles will have to be looked into before we make any further raids. I think those are the lessons we’ve learnt, gentlemen. Are there any questions?’
‘Yes,’ Callaghan said, bored already and eager to get back to work. ‘When and where are the next raids?’
‘As it’s clear that the success of the raids depends on surprise, we’ll strike next where the enemy will least expect us.’
‘Where’s that?’ Lieutenant Greaves asked.
‘Exactly where we raided before;’ Stirling, in better mood, replied with a wicked schoolboy’s grin. ‘At Sirte and Tamit – but approaching by a different, more westerly route.’
‘When?’ Captain Callaghan asked impatiently.
‘A couple of weeks from now,’ Stirling told him. ‘To be precise, Christmas Eve.’
‘My Christmas present!’ Lewes said.
16
By the time Stirling’s raiders moved out again the situation in the Western Desert of Cyrenaica had again changed dramatically. The 5th South African Brigade had been annihilated by the Afrika Korps south-east of Sidi Rezegh; fierce fighting then took place between the Axis forces and the New Zealand Division; General Ritchie’s Eighth Army sustained heavy casualties, but still managed to weaken the Afrika Korps, causing Rommel to withdraw his forces from the Crusader battle rather than let them be destroyed; and finally, on 10 December, Tobruk as relieved and the Afrika Korps began its retreat, first to Gazala, then as far south as El Agheila. Stirling’s raiders, therefore, in leaving the Jalo Oasis on Christmas Eve, even as units of the Eighth Army were advancing on Benghazi, found themselves travelling towards the southern flank of the retreating Axis forces, under skies filled with Axis and Allied aircraft, all flying to and from the battle zone.
‘To get to our targets,’ Stirling said to Captain Halliman, ‘we’re going to find ourselves practically in the lap of the Axis forces now dug in around Agheila. This could be rather tricky.’
‘Damned right,’ Sergeant Lorrimer said from the rear seat, where he was sitting as Stirling’s second-in-command.
Even as they were speaking, the faint throb of engines made them squint up at the sky where they saw a fleet of Handley-Page Halifax four-engine bombers heading north to pound Rommel’s forces.
‘Good lads,’ Stirling murmured.
As before, he was travelling with SI patrol, commanded by LRDG Captain Gus Halliman. This time, however, instead of targeting only Sirte, the plan was for Stirling’s raiding party to be dropped off within hiking distance of Sirte while another, led by Captain Callaghan, would make a return journey to Tamit for a second attack based on the wisdom of hindsight. When the two raids were completed, both teams would meet up with the LRDG lorries at a desert RV due south of the targets.
Meanwhile, a third raiding party led by Captain Lewes, with Lieutenant Greaves as second-in-command, was being transported by the LRDG T2 Patrol, mostly composed of New Zealanders, to Nofilia, over 120 miles east of Sirte, where they would launch a simultaneous raid.
The first day’s journey across the vast, flat plain passed uneventfully and with even less punctures than before, because the LRDG, after their previous experiences, were now using specially reinforced tyres. As usual, the men were all wearing shemaghs to protect their faces, not only from the fierce heat, but also from the billowing clouds of sand churned up by the lorries’ wheels. These, however, did little to alleviate the sweat that soaked through their clothing. Nevertheless, as they gazed across the vast expanse of the desert, seeing the cliffs of the upland plateaux beyond the heat haze in the north and the golden sand dunes framed by azure sky in the west, few of them were immune to the desert’s lunar beauty and most realized they would never forget it.
This time they passed a few Arabs on their camels, desert traders carrying their wares to other Arab camps irrespective of the aircraft overhead or the tanks and armoured cars massed to the south. Seen in the distance, with their loose robes fluttering, wobbling precariously on their camels, distorted by the heat haze shimmering up from the desert floor, the Arabs looked archaic, ever unreal.
‘You wouldn’t bleedin’ credit it, would you?’ Jimbo said to his mate, Frankie, sitting beside him in the rear of one of the Chevrolets as it carried them across the burning sands. ‘Those bleeders haven’t changed in a million years and aren’t likely to. Here we are with our tanks and armoured cars and aircraft, fighting with 25-pounder guns and semi-automatic rifles, and those bastards are still crossing the desert on camels with nothing but swords on their hips. Fucking unbelievable!’
‘Right,’ Frankie replied, yearning desperately for a fag but not able to light one because of the wind beating at his face. ‘One minute you’re looking at the blackened wreck of a Daimler armoured car or Sherman tank, all rag and bone inside; the next you se
e an A-rab on a flea-ridden camel and you think you’re hallucinating from the heat.’
‘Or a mirage,’ Jimbo said.
‘I see them all the time, mate. Great pools of water, naked women, pints of bitter, plates of roast beef and Yorkshire pudding. I see ’em and smell ’em night and day. That’s what this place does to you.’
‘Know just what you mean,’ Jimbo said.
That night, when the trucks were laagered, the men erected their standard triangular poncho tents between the vehicles and the ground, put up (and rushed to use) the thunderboxes, then lit a few camp-fires and used petrol-can cookers to make their own fry-ups of bacon rashers, tinned tomatoes and bread, the eggs being too fragile to carry.
Alas, when these more pleasurable activities had been exhausted, they were compelled to undertake the more tedious, yet vitally necessary, chores. For the men of L Detachment, SAS, it meant removing their bolt-action rifles, semi-automatic weapons and machine-guns from their wrappings of stretched condoms, cleaning them yet again, no matter how minute the traces of sand found in them, and then wrapping them up again for another day’s travel across the desert.
‘That’s the first time I’ve ever used a contraceptive,’ Neil confessed. Then, realizing what he had said, he blushed a deep crimson.
‘Ho, ho!’ Frankie roared.
‘The secret’s out!’ Taff added.
‘Virgin, are you?’ Jimbo asked him with a sly grin. ‘So no use for a rubber?’
‘Course not!’ Neil insisted, blushing an even deeper crimson. ‘I just don’t use a johnny, that’s all. It deadens the sensation, my girl says.’
‘Mmmm,’ Jimbo responded, grinning slyly at Frankie. ‘Deadens the sensation, does it? What do you do, then? Pull out before you come?’
‘Hey, come on, Jimbo!’ Neil protested, pretending to be involved with his kit, this giving him an excuse to keep his head down and hide his reddening cheeks. ‘You don’t ask a bloke that kind of thing!’
‘Yes, you do. I’ve asked Frankie here. We’re mates and that’s what mates talk about. Isn’t that right, Frankie?’
‘It is,’ Frankie replied, pleased to be discussing Neil’s virginity instead of his own. ‘Mates shouldn’t have secrets from one another, after all. What are friends for, if not for sharing their little secrets?’
‘Right,’ Taff said emphatically. ‘So come on, Neil, let us have the filthy facts. If you don’t use a johnny, how do keep your little bit of fluff from getting a bun in the oven?’
‘Show some respect, Taff!’
‘We’re your friends. We’d like to know.’
‘Why don’t you try guessing?’ Neil said as if disdainful, though actually trying to hide the fact that he did not have a clue, for he had never got that far and assumed the other three had.
‘We’d like you to tell us,’ Frankie insisted, artfully hiding the fact that he, too, was a virgin and had only ever used a condom to protect his rifle.
‘I respect my girl too much,’ Neil lied shamelessly.
‘Do you know what to do without a johnny? Have you ever unwrapped one, kid?’
‘Aw, come on, Jimbo! Knock it off! Of course I’ve unwrapped one. I just don’t like to use them, as I said, and that’s all I’m saying.’
‘So what do you do?’ Jimbo insisted. ‘Pull it out before you come? Do you squirt it all over her lovely belly and make a right bleedin’ mess?’
‘God, you’re disgusting! I’m not listening to this.’ Neil stood up and glanced across the desert like a man deep in thought. ‘I think I’ll go for a piss.’
Neil snorted, then stomped away from the camp to take a leak out in the desert, well away from the mocking laughter of his mates. ‘Filthy-minded bastards!’ he muttered as he stepped into darkness, suddenly filling up with visions of his girlfriend back home in Blackburn. A pleasingly plump lass who worked in the cotton mills, she had frequently let him feel her breasts in the back row of the local cinema, but had never let him go any farther, always whispering, ‘Not until we’re married, luv!’ Neil was not sure that he loved her, but he certainly wanted to marry her, if only to feel more of her, and now all that talk about johnnies was making him think of her.
Suddenly he felt very far from home and yearned to be back there, even if only for a short while, back in the back row of the cinema, feeling Florence’s soft breast.
‘Those bastards!’ he muttered as he spread his legs and irrigated the sand of the vast, moonlit darkness just outside the perimeter of the camp. ‘They’ve got no sensitivity.’ Nevertheless, he felt an awful lot better when he had emptied his bladder.
Meanwhile, the navigators were using the abundance of stars to check their position and plot the next day’s course. Their calculations would, however, be double-checked at first light the next day with the aid of a compass and sextant.
Bored out of their minds with no one to torment, Jimbo and Frankie, having been taught a few things by their LRDG navigator, the amiable Rhodesian, Mike Sadler, watched him at work with his sextant. Inspired by his performance, they decided to experiment with improvised compasses by stropping razor blades against the palms of their hands, as Mike had taught them, and dangling them on lengths of thread to see if they pointed north.
‘Mine’s stopped,’ Jimbo said. ‘It’s pointing north.’
‘How do you know?’ Frankie asked. ‘Could be south, for all you know.’
‘Wherever it stops is north, you bleedin’ berk!’
‘So how do you know?’
‘’Cause Mike told us so.’
‘Mike’s a bloody Rhodesian,’ Frankie said, ‘and they’re all mad as hatters and born liars. He was pulling your leg.’
‘It’s fucking north,’ Jimbo said. He studied the dangling razor blade for a moment, not really seeing it, his thoughts focused on sex, this having been brought on by all that talk about contraceptives.
Now, with a hard-on, brought on by sexual taunts, Jimbo suddenly realized that he had not had it for a long time – certainly not since leaving Cairo a couple of months ago. Instead, he had been forced to toss off a lot and make his own right bleedin’ mess in the desert sands. Bloody shameful, when you thought of it, what a man had to do, no matter how hard he tried avoiding it. Human nature was base, all right.
Still tormented by his hard-on, which was only made more insistent by recollections of the many delicious little whores he had had in Tiger Lil’s in the Sharia el Berka (all the time trying desperately not to think of his wife in Wapping), Jimbo tried to distract himself by recollecting how, during one weekend in Cairo, he had tried to distract himself from the temptations of Tiger Lil’s by visiting the Great Pyramid of Cheops, located on the west bank of the Nile.
‘Pretty bloody mysterious, isn’t it?’ he said, tapping the dangling razor blade with his forefinger and watching it slowly spin before pointing north. ‘I mean, the way a magnetized razor blade will always point north.’
‘I wouldn’t know if it’s mysterious or not,’ Frankie responded pragmatically. ‘I just know it does.’
‘Bloody funny things, razor blades,’ Jimbo said, trying to lose himself in higher thoughts. ‘Remember that day I visited the Great Pyramid?’
‘No.’
‘Well, I did, see? And you know what I found out?’
‘No.’
‘Well, I visited the Great Pyramid because I’m interested in certain mysteries, see? Like Ancient Egypt and the stars and what have you. And when I visited the Great Pyramid I learnt, from this old Arab who guided me, that if you put a razor blade inside the pyramid between shaves, it’ll never go blunt. In fact, if you keep puttin’ the razor blade in there between shaves, you could use the same razor blade for ever. Bloody amazing, isn’t it?’
‘Fascinating,’ Frankie replied. ‘I’m amazed that half the population of Egypt isn’t lining up every night to leave their razor blades in the pyramids and save themselves a fortune in the long term.’ He tapped his dangling razor blade and watched it spinning
. ‘Fucking rubbish!’ he said.
Later that evening they stretched out on their groundsheets, but found it next to impossible to sleep, being tormented by buzzing flies and whining mosquitoes, as well as haunted by the thought of creepy-crawlies, particularly snakes and scorpions.
‘I keep thinking I can feel things crawling over me,’ Frankie complained. ‘I’m not scared of the Krauts, I don’t mind dying by the bullet, but I have to confess my nerve collapses completely when I think there’s something crawling up my leg, heading straight for my balls.’
‘Stop being so bleedin’ childish,’ Jimbo remonstrated. ‘You’re supposed to be superior to common soldiers, so try to act like you’re … Christ, what’s that?’
‘What?’
‘Fucking hell!’ Jimbo frantically rolled off his groundsheet and turned back to examine it. ‘Something nipped me,’ he said. ‘A bleedin’ scorpion! I’ll be dead by first light … Whoops!’ He reached down and snatched at it. ‘Here’s the little bugger! A stone as sharp as a fucking razor. All right, Frankie, stop laughing.’
Later, when it grew colder and even the flies and mosquitoes had settled down, they were kept awake by the bass rumbling of heavy bombers overhead and, for an hour or so, by a son et lumière spectacle of tracer shells and bomb explosions illuminating the north-western horizon over what they could only assume was El Agheila, where the Afrika Korps had dug in.
‘War can be so beautiful,’ Captain Halliman said to Stirling where they lay side by side under a triangular poncho tent strung between their lorry and the ground.
‘You think so?’
‘Yes. It has a kind of terrible beauty, but the beauty of it can’t be denied. I suppose that’s what makes war so seductive – it startles and stuns. Rather strange, don’t you think?’
‘No,’ Stirling replied. ‘I don’t think it’s strange at all. Everything seductive is dangerous – and that’s what war is.’
‘Seductive?’
