by Colin Smith
The lieutenant-colonel had already left with Calderwell in a Humber staff car with his new driver at the wheel, an ungainly and likeable private from one of the rifle companies called Hawkins who had acquitted himself well during that dreadful business at Sarafand. He had left behind his signaller who was passing on his orders to the major commanding the men who would mount the cordon.
***
Lang was concentrating on his Morse, head down, earphones on, so it was the Templer who heard them. First came the high transmission whine of army transport, then tailboards crashing down, then the military clatter that is mainly concerned with rifles and boots. The German clicked off the table lamp, pushed the edge of the blackout curtain away from the window with the back of his left hand and took a peep. He could make out nothing untoward.
He went to the front door and gently opened it about six inches. The Templer thought perhaps he could hear voices but some way off. He looked to the right: nothing. He opened it opened it a little further then took a careful pace forward and peered cautiously around the door jamb to his left. The first thing he saw was a van parked about three hundred metres up the street. In the starlight he could clearly make out the distinctive diamond shaped loop aerial on its roof. It was a type he had seen Wehrmacht signals units use and he knew what it was for. He could not make out whether the aerial was revolving or not but there appeared to be helmeted British soldiers standing around it. He heard another vehicle coming down the street from the opposite direction. He looked to his right again and saw a car come to a halt. A door slammed and a clipped officer’s voice said, “Wait here Hawkins. You may be needed to run people back to the Russian Compound.” The Templer slowly closed the front door, easing its latch silently back into place.
Lang was still crouched over his Morse key at the dining table and quite oblivious to all this. The Templer walked up behind him and very gently removed his earphones at the same time whispering, “Stop sending. The British army is in the street with a detector van.”
Lang, half turned, looked up at him, the Morse key still twitching in his hand as he finished a letter. Then, a credit to his trainers, he went back to it and tapped out QRM, which meant “man made interference” and usually applied to frequency jamming. Since Athens appeared to be receiving him loud and clear he thought they might get the point. And then, and only then, he pulled the plug.
Outside somebody shouted an order and they heard the rattle of boots go past the bungalow. Lang stood up and picked up the Schmeisser and the Templer was standing and listening with his PPK pistol in his hand, and a spare service cap in the other. They both had on bits of their South African uniforms. “They’re sealing the street off,” the German said in a matter of fact way. He always became calm at moments like this. It was impressive.
Lang said, “Let’s go out shooting now before they’ve settled in. Take them by surprise.”
For a moment the Templer appeared to consider this. Then he said, “I know what we’ll do.”
***
Hawkins, happy as a sandboy, had parked the Humber staff car about a hundred yards away from the bungalow where the Templer and Lang were and was waiting while the Colonel conferred with somebody in the civvy looking van with the funny looking aerial on its roof. He still couldn’t believe his luck in getting this job and getting out of the rifle company where the other lads were good enough muckers but he could never seem to do anything right.
However hard he tried his platoon sergeant, who last he heard looked like he might keep his foot though whether he would ever walk on it proper again was another matter, was always picking on him. Sometimes your face didn’t fit. It was as simple as that. It had happened at school from time to time and at a couple of jobs - he had had a really rough time in a garage and he loved cars. He had not settled down until his Dad wangled him that apprenticeship, well, it was a kind of apprenticeship, at the butcher’s where the governor had let him drive the delivery van.
Then his call-up papers came and he was in the Cake and coming on three thousand miles away from England. And he had never been further out of London than Brighton and Margate. It was exciting but a bit worrying. At times you seemed so far away from every familiar thing that it was hard to believe that he was ever going to get back there. And you knew that some people wouldn’t be. You knew that. Stood to reason. Not in the infantry. It was always somewhere in the back of your head.
Sometimes he felt that if he stuck to the CO he would be all right. The Colonel was a real gent, no doubt about that, moustache an’all. He was the first person in the army who had made him feel any good at anything. When he heard what he had done at that demo at Sarafand when the sergeant thought he had touched off a mine the Colonel had told him in front of the rest of his platoon that, if they been in action, he would have seen that he got a Military Medal for it. Hawkins had never felt so proud in all his life. It was almost as good as getting the bloody medal.
Now he was the Commanding Officer’s driver, batman and sometimes his messenger. “You’re going to be what our Yankee brethren call ‘a gofer’ the Colonel had told him. The CO had recently befriended some stranded American fliers, grounded in Palestine while their aeroplanes were being shipped out. As a result of this friendship he had acquired one of their new Winchester semi-automatic .30 M1 carbines, a neat little weapon which he allowed Hawkins to carry instead of his issue Short Magazine Lee Enfield rifle that was heavier and longer and generally less convenient in a car. The carbine was lying across the back seat now. Hawkins considered putting it in the front then thought better of it. It would get in the way. Besides, it might be regarded as overdoing things and he didn’t want the Colonel to think he was the sort that got windy over a couple of wog spies or whatever they were.
Some helmeted men ran by carrying coils of spiked Dannert wire to set up at the end of the street. He recognised them as some of his old platoon. One of them paused to say hello. “Wotcha Hawkie. CO’s driver eh? Bloody cushy number.” Hawkins smiled. It was no more than the truth.
There was movement around the houses at the end of the street, doors opening. They were obviously beginning to search them. Hawkins thought he heard a woman screech some protest. Then he became aware of more movement in the direction where the men running with the coil of barbed wire had gone. Presently he saw two figures in the street, both holding large objects of some kind. At first he thought they were civilians and wondered whether he should tell them to get back inside, wave the carbine at them if they looked like arguing. Then to his relief he saw that they were obviously army or Palestine Police for one was wearing a flat, officer’s type service cap and the taller one a beret. There were a few odds and sods attached to them tonight. Hawkins decided that they were most likely police.
`For a moment the pair seemed undecided which way they wanted to go and then they walked towards him. As they got closer he could see that the taller of the two, who was in the lead, was carrying something that looked like a suitcase. The other was holding a long bag, a grip.
“We’ve found the set,” announced the tall one through Hawkins’ open window holding up the suitcase like a trophy. “We need a lift to the Russian Compound.” It was an officer’s voice.
They were right up to him now, both tall but the man who had spoken to him the tallest. One had a major’s crowns on his epaulettes. “Can you run us up there? Our car had to go back to the Compound to pick up somebody else.”
“This is my CO’s car sir,” Hawkins began.
“For God’s sake man it’s only a ten minute drive this time of night. We might even meet up with our car on the way and the sooner this set is in the right hands the better. Come on.” He was already opening the back door.
Hawkins slid behind the wheel. His boss had warned him something like this might happen. “Where was it to sir?”
“Russian Compound. Then straight back here. Fast as you like.”
“Do you want to put anything in the boot sir?”
“No
, we’ll make do with our laps. It’s too delicate this thing.” They were both in the back now. There was plenty of room in the Humber to put the bags at their feet if they wanted to. Despite their hurry Hawkins noted that they closed the doors gently and began to warm to them. The Colonel was the same; couldn’t abide a slammer, especially first thing in the morning after a heavy night in the mess.
The car started first time and Hawkins had the hand brake off, first gear engaged, the black out cowled headlights on with a fluency that belied his lack of co-ordination in other matters. At the end of the street his old platoon mates had just about finished putting the coils of barbed wire down. Hawkins slowed down. They saw who it was pulled the wire aside with the rope they had attached to the end of it and impatiently waved him through. “Fast as you like now,” said the officer’s voice behind him.
After a few minutes Hawkins asked, “Is my carbine in the way back there sir.”
“What?”
“My rifle sir?”
“I wondered what I was sitting on,” said the major behind him.
“Put it up in the front if you like sir.”
“It’s all right here. I’ll stick in on the floor. What is it? Italian?” A lot of British drivers carried captured Italian carbines.
“No sir. American.”
“Hmm. Don’t see many of these around.”
“No sir. It’s a Winchester.”
“Sign of the times I suppose.”
Hawkins didn’t what to make of that.
When they got to the gates of the Russian Compound the major, who was the one who had done all the talking, told him: “Don’t drive in. Wait here.” Then he jumped out and spoke to the Palestine Police sentry whose job it was to raise or lower the red and white painted wooden pole that allowed vehicles in or out.
For the first time Hawkins noticed that he not only had a major’s crowns on his epaulettes but South African shoulder flashes on his drill shirt. Definitely not Palestine Police then. He wondered whether he had been one of the lucky ones who had escaped from Tobruk. The South African appeared to be having an animated conversion with the sentry, at one point throwing his hands up in a gesture of despair. Hawkins thought it made him look quite foreign. You would never catch his colonel doing anything like that. Then the sentry was pointing and he was nodding, obviously getting directions. This time, when he got into the car the major slammed the door and Hawkins permitted himself a grimace.
“Right,” he said in a voice that went with the mistreated door. “Driver, we’ve got to get out of here right away. We have to get down to Hebron. Fast as you like. Do you know the way? We get back on the Bethlehem road where your cordon is and then we go south. Anyway, all you have to do is drive. I’ll direct you. Don’t worry about your CO. I’ve given that sentry a message to pass onto him through the police wireless room.”
Then, as he started up, Hawkins heard him turn to the other officer and say: “You’ll never guess what the silly sod has done. He’s buggered off to Hebron with the advance party and we’ve got to take the set down there. Absolutely bloody unbelievable isn’t it?” Hawkins heard the other officer grunt something he couldn’t catch. As he pulled away he noticed that the police sentry was still in his box, obviously in no hurry to pass on his message. Shortly afterwards, the major said: “Turn right here, that’s it, good man”.
Instead of going straight down past the King David hotel and out onto the Bethlehem road again Hawkins found himself being directed onto the King George the Fifth. Then he was rattling over the cobbles along Balfour Street, named after the British foreign secretary the Arabs loathed for offering the Jews a homeland in somebody else’s home. “Wouldn’t it be quicker we went back down the way we’ve come sir?” Hawkins suggested.
“Normally, yes, it would,” said the major patiently. “But not with all your roadblocks up it won’t be. We’ll be waved down every five minutes.”
“Yessir. Hadn’t thought of that.”
Which was true. He had just spotted one of the battalion’s three tonners parked on a corner down to the left of an intersection they had crossed. Not that he could make head or tail of what they were up to. Why they couldn’t just leave the bloody wireless set, if that’s what it was, at the Russian Compound was beyond him? What was all this business dashing down to Hebron to give it to some advance party?
Hawkins had never been to Hebron, called el Khalil by the Arabs. All he knew about it was that Royal Army Service Corps convoys bound for the Egyptian border and El Alamein had started driving through there and Beersheba and then cutting across to Khan Yunnis and Rafah. They did it to reduce traffic along the Gaza coast road where Axis air raids were feared. Obviously, it was all way above his head. Another case where your humble private knew better than to reason why. Only thing to do was to keep your mouth shut and drive where you were told to drive. The Colonel would have probably explained why they were doing it. But you didn’t meet many officers like him. It worried him that his boss had not been there to give him a direct order to ferry these two about.
They bypassed Yemen Moshe and the broken down windmill that the Victorian benefactor Sir Moses Montefiore had built when the first of his coreligionists settled outside the old city walls. They skirted around an open area that the municipality had plans to turn into a British style park and by various lanes and backs roads, with occasional pauses while the major and the other officer discussed the route - “not left here, the next one” - re-emerged on the Bethlehem-Hebron road well south of the railway station.
By this time, according to the clock on the dashboard of the Humber, it was eleven. Hawkins was beginning to feel tired. He had been up since shortly after five when his first task of the day was to get together whatever items of uniform the CO was supposed to be wearing. The petrol gauge registered just over half full, about enough to get them to Hebron and back though he would be happier if he could get a refill. Hawkins suppressed a yawn. It occurred to him that he had not drunk or eaten anything since his evening meal about six hours before. He had just finished writing a couple of letters home and been about to turn into his pit when he had been told to get the car ready. If he could have a brew now, a good rust coloured one full of condensed milk and sugar, he could go on until dawn. No doubt his passengers had tucked into something just before they stepped out. It had not occurred to either of them to ask him if he wanted anything to eat which was typical of a certain type of officer. Too full of this bloody wireless set they were.
Once past the monastery of Saint Elias the tar road gave way to hard dirt. The Humber passed a group of four army lorries with their canvas sides down and their rear sheets flapping in their slipstream though it was too dark to see what they were carrying. About half a mile beyond them, on a narrow stretch of road, they started eating the dust of a single fifteen hundredweight truck in a nondescript grey-green colour with a crudely painted RAF red, white and blue roundel disintegrating on its tailboard. It was laden with a pile of swaying cardboard boxes that could have been rations of some kind. As soon as they were on a straight stretch Hawkins hooted and overtook it.
As they went by the Templer noticed it was a left-hand drive Fiat truck, presumably part of the enormous booty collected from the Italians in early 1941. Both sides used captured transport in the desert and he had heard it was never safe to assume that manufacture indicated present ownership. Then, about ten minutes after they had passed the Fiat and not all that far from Hebron, Hawkins was told to stop.
***
By the time they found where their quarry had been staying house-to-house searching had woken up the entire street and the troops were spending a lot of time chasing curious Jewish civilians back inside their homes. Since there was no reply when they knocked the soldiers had smashed down the front door of the bungalow and run around its rooms yelling and tripping over things in the dark and very nearly shooting each other until somebody found a light switch. In a bedroom furnished with two single beds a wardrobe yielded so
me drill shirts with South African shoulder flashes and a wide brimmed black hat with some Orthodox sidelocks sewn into the sides straight out of a fancy dress party. Inside the hat there was a false beard with some glue to put it on and some spirit to remove the glue. There was also an Australian slouch hat with the name of a private in a Pioneer unit stencilled into its band.
“Well, there’s his antenna,” said Hare, pointing to the wire dangling down from the picture rail and leading out to the window. They had taken the set with them. Walked out with it. They must have iced water in their veins.
“Good of them to leave something behind wasn’t it?” said Calderwell who was holding the Australian hat in his hand. “Otherwise, we might have thought we had all been dreaming.”
“I still don’t believe it,” said the Assistant Super. “What did they do? Make themselves invisible?”
The battalion commander came in. For the last half hour he had been complaining about somebody using his car without so much as a by-your-leave. Now he seemed utterly deflated. “My car and my driver are definitely missing,” he announced in a crushed voice leaving a cracking salute from one of his company sergeant-major’s unacknowledged. “They were last seen by one of my roadblocks heading towards the city centre. Apparently, there were two people sitting in the back. Nobody involved in this operation appears to have borrowed it. Nobody I know of anyway.”
“Did they get a good look at them?” asked Hare before he could stop himself.
“No,” said the Colonel, “They didn’t. Since it was my car they simply waved it through.” He absently flicked an end of his moustache.. “I suppose they were wearing uniform.”
