Take or Destroy!

by John Harris

  Now that the lorries had set off for Ibrahimiya with all his friends, he was having second thoughts about his impulsive ducking out of sight. Coming to the conclusion that he might as well be hanged for a sheep as for a lamb, he had called at the house of the Arab who usually supplied him with beer and had just moved on to the home of Zulfica Ifzi when Umberto’s first shell exploded against the mole. The bang seemed to lift him through the door and Zulfica Ifzi, who was just preparing for bed, swung round, stark naked, her eyes wide with fear. ‘It’s the British,’ Bontempelli yelled. ‘It’s an air raid!’ He reached for her, intending to rush her into the caves that had been dug in the cliff face below Mas el Bub, but at that moment the second shell exploded among the native houses and, as the flying tiles rattled on the roofs and walls, she flung herself at him, shrieking with fright. At the third explosion, she clung even tighter, wrapping herself round him in her petrified terror, so that he found himself fighting against her, hampered by her arms and legs, his rifle, and the bottles of beer he had bought.

  ‘Holy Mother of God,’ he was panting. ‘Let go!’ Now that he could hear the guns of the port defences firing, he realized his first assumption that this was an air raid must be wrong. He could hear whistles blowing and could already imagine himself cowering in a dugout with the rotten sandbags bursting, the candle guttering in the blast, and the dust and pebbles dropping from the quivering roof. Since he had always had a horror of being buried alive, he decided he’d be wiser to stay where he was.

  Then his ingrained sense of survival began to tell him that in the Borgo Nero, in Zulfica Ifzi’s room, he was as safe as he would be anywhere. It was surrounded by dozens of mud-brick houses and protected from blast by half a hundred walls and the bulk of the Ibn al As Mosque. Only a direct hit could harm him, and the British, Italians and Germans - all eager to keep on good terms with the native population - had always insisted that the Arab town should never be harmed. As his fear slipped away, he became more conscious of the naked girl clinging to him. His thoughts began to turn from safety to other things. He pushed her away, laid down his rifle and the bottles of beer, and dragged off his jacket.

  If he were caught now, he would probably be shot; but with a British force apparently about to descend on Qaba from the sea and the Eighth Army heading through the desert from the east, he had a strong suspicion that he wasn’t going to be free to enjoy the fruits of life much longer anyway. He had no intention of dying if he could help it, but if the war dragged on he could well be a prisoner for a long time. He decided to make the best of what he had.

  ‘Holy Mother of God protect and keep us,’ he said and, crossing himself quickly, began to push Zulfica Ifzi towards the bed.

  Private Jumpke, at the end of the mole, couldn’t believe his eyes as the ships swept past him. The crew of the nearby 47 had come alive too, but they were almost too late.

  Their shots whistled past the stern of Umberto just as her guns cracked again. With all hope of disguise and deception gone, the Oerlikons on Umberto’s deck were bursting into flame along with every gun on the launches which could be brought to bear. Streams of tracer were spattering the stonework round Jumpke’s post and he again flung himself to the bottom of his little concrete box, his hands over his head.

  Then he realized that though he could hear the bullets whanging off. the concrete, they were doing him no harm, and he reached up for the telephone and cranked the handle. It was connected to the bunker below the Kriegsmarine barracks, and as soon as he heard the answering click he screamed ‘Raid!’ at the top of his voice. It wasn’t the proper way to give a report but Jumpke was more keen to keep his head down than be a good soldier.

  The youthful naval ensign at the other end of the line had been waiting for a quarter of an hour now for the air raid, which still seemed to be taking place in leisurely fashion out at the airfield, to switch to the town. Already somewhat alarmed and in a state of nervous excitement, he naturally assumed that Jumpke said ‘Air raid’.

  He knew exactly what to do because it had been drummed into duty officers half a dozen times since the four supply ships had come in. Swinging round, he checked that the black-out switch was up, sent a man to crank the air raid siren, and pressed the button that set off the line of smoke floats circling the harbour. Immediately, smoke began to pour out, pungent, greasy and yellow. But the shell from Umberto which had knocked out the searchlight near the Mantazeh Palace had also severed the electrical circuit to the smoke pots on the landward side of the harbour and only those on the mole worked. With the wind blowing from the south-east, the smoke was carried out to sea, leaving the harbour area clear.

  As they plunged into the smoke, the men on Umberto’s bridge couldn’t believe their incredible luck. Though the greasy folds made it more difficult to see where they were going, it also blunted the beams of the searchlights at Mas el Bub and the Bab al Gawla.

  ‘Bridge! Are you all right?’ As they edged closer Hockold could hear the first lieutenant, calling from the conning position above the hand steering aft, and the unemotional reply from the yeoman that they were.

  Their speed and course appeared to be exactly right and it was time to join his party on the deck. But as he made his way from the bridge, the heavy machine guns ashore found the ship.

  His heart began to hammer against the cage of his ribs as luminous yellow slots sped past like beads on a string, and he heard screams as they furrowed and ploughed up the deck. As he pushed through the crowded cursing men struggling to make their way to the ship’s side, instinctively waiting for the shot that would kill him, above him the bridge protection was already being torn to shreds, while splinters flew from gangways and ladders. The ship’s guns were making a tremendous clamour now and there was an incessant crackle of small arms fire. To the men on the deck near Hockold the moment was one of flame and anger; to the men still below it meant waiting with ice in their bowels, unable to tell whether the crashes they heard came from their own gun or from shells exploding aboard.

  In Hochstatter’s headquarters, Nietzsche turned furiously to von Steen.

  ‘Jesus Christ,’ he said. ‘We don’t want smoke! We can’t see to hit the bastards now! For God’s sake, shut it off!’

  As he spoke, a heavy machine-gun started probing across the front of the hotel and they all dropped to the floor. Oerlikon shells spanged and cracked against the walls, chopping out great chunks of stone and mud-brick. Then, as they stopped, a lighter weapon took over.

  ‘Stop that damned air raid siren!’ Nietzsche shouted, and Wutka scrambled on all fours to grab the telephone and bawl into it. A moment later the wail died in a drone of anguish.

  ‘Get the harbour lights on so we can see what the hell we’re doing!’ Von Steen was in contact now with naval headquarters. ‘The damned place’s full of Tommies!’

  As the message was passed on, the loading clusters strung round the harbour came on and they could see the smoke drifting grey-yellow and ghostly across the water. Then a freak wind momentarily cleared it and at last they got a glimpse of the upper works of the ship beyond the mole.

  ‘That is Umberto,’ Hochstatter shouted.

  ‘Well, she hasn’t got Umberto’s crew aboard,’ Nietzsche yelled back.

  As he reached for the telephone to issue orders, the heavy machine-guns on Umberto began again. The shutters leapt and clattered as they dissolved into splinters, the black-out curtain was ripped to tatters, and the light went out as glass began to tinkle and plaster fell in chunks from the ceiling. Hochstatter and the other officers flung themselves to the floor again.

  On his knees, Nietzsche clawed for the telephone and contacted Schoeler. ‘Guns!’ he roared. ‘We need your guns!’

  As the searchlight by the palace had gone out, the whole of Qaba had become aware that the danger lay not out at the airfield as they’d believed but here in the town.

  The remaining two searchlights tried to bring their beams round; the smoke was confusing, however; and as Umbe
rto was now passing the tip of the mole they couldn’t properly be brought to bear on her. Horambeb was already in the shadow of the great arc of stone but the smoke floats were situated on top of the guard wall so that though the thick grey-yellow clouds poured through the rigging at the top of her mast, they left her uncovered as she turned to port and wide open to the view of the 75 at Mas el Bub.

  Grouching with his party among the splintered ladders on the deck of Umberto, Hockold’s head jerked up at the flash of acid white against the loom of the cliff as the heavy gun fired.

  ‘That’s not a 47!’ Amos turned as another brilliant flash came from the cliff at the opposite side of the town and a spout of grey water lifted beyond the RAF launches, the spray sparkling in the glow of the searchlight. ‘There’s another there, too!’

  Hockold’s heart seemed to stop. It was always one of the chances of war that an enemy could change his dispositions after dark or bring up unexpected weapons in secret. The entire Eighth Army attack was based on just such an assumption, and Hockold realized that the whole plan for Cut-Price was now in jeopardy and the battle would have to be fought by rule of thumb, its success depending not on pre-arranged tactics so much as on individual courage and initiative.

  Amos was shouting again - ‘They’ve got Horambeb’ – and Hockold turned to see tracer skidding past and shells flashing against the bow and bridge of the water boat.

  The unexpected weight of artillery fire hadn’t gone unnoticed on Umberto’s bridge and Hardness was endeavouring to adjust to it.

  ‘That gun there,’ he shouted to the officer on the foredeck. ‘Get it, Guns!’

  But before Umberto’s, little popgun could fire, the 75, having hit Horambeb twice already, switched targets. Its first shot was a lucky one. There was a tremendous crash and the little popgun disappeared over the side in a tangle of torn metal and flying splinters that killed the gunnery officer and three men and wounded seven others in a fraction of a second. More splinters knocked the glass out of the wheelhouse windows and Hockold heard them thump into the woodwork above his head.

  The heavy machine-guns at Mas el Bub and near the mosque were also hammering away, by now, and the smoke had cut visibility to a few feet. There was blood on the decks and frantic sailors were heaving the dead aside. As they dragged the wounded below to the surgeon, more flying splinters found targets. The Germans were firing haphazardly, however, and, though almost every shot hit something, they were not hitting Umberto’s vitals. The upperworks were in ribbons but the steel-covered bridge was still functioning and the engines were still turning.

  On Horambeb, now curving away to port from Umberto’s side, the engineers were keeping up an enormous head of steam in the boilers, but then a shell from the 47 above the slipway hit her wheelhouse and her captain was flung aside dead with the helmsman, while the first lieutenant crawled away stupefied. A second 47 millimetre shell hit her from only a few hundred yards as she headed in but the determination of her captain had already done its work. Steered by an elderly petty officer with a face like a set of nutcrackers, who kept his head just above the sill of the wheelhouse, she continued to move away from Umberto, her bridge a wreck, her mast trailing over her stern. Trembling under the thrust of engines held at a gland-shattering pressure of steam, she bore ahead. Then another shell from the 47 tore through her side, to explode in the grimy cavern of her engine room. A high shaft of red-orange flame, ancient soot and roaring steam shot up from her funnel and she immediately began to lose way, her rudder and engines useless.

  From Umberto they watched her with agonized faces, then a shell hit Umberto herself with an aching shuddering crash and they felt the ship roll against the explosion.

  ‘Another two hundred yards,’ Babington prayed, ‘and we’ve made it!’

  As he spoke, the bright glare of the searchlight in the centre of the town disappeared and they realized they were in the shelter of the great stone mole. Hardness had just ordered the wheel to be put to port and rung down to stop engines when another shell from the 75 at Mas el Bub hit the roof of the wheelhouse. It killed Hardness and Babington outright and wounded the helmsman, the yeoman and the Italian-speaking signaller. At the most crucial moment of the approach, Umberto was no longer under control.

  Von Steen saw the explosion through the smoke. The shell had passed dangerously near to where Giuseppe Bianchi was lying astern of the other three ships.

  ‘Stop those guns,’ he screamed, and as Nietzsche crawled to the telephone the firing slackened. Despite the bullets still chipping plaster from the ceiling, Nietzsche lifted his head to look out. He could just see the topmast and upperworks of Umberto, caught by the overspill of the searchlight, sticking out of the smoke as they glided past Giuseppe Bianchi. He stared at them helplessly.

  ‘For God’s sake,’ he said. ‘What do we kill them with?’

  Von Steen swung round. ‘Not with guns,’ he shouted. ‘Get your men down to the mole!’

  As Nietzsche scrambled to his feet and headed for the stairs, Horambeb’s port bow thumped against the mole. As the steel scraped the stone, groaning and flinging out sparks in protest, the petty officer at the helm, coughing at the smoke in his lungs, put the wheel hard-a-starboard. The old water boat swung outwards and slithered along the wall, tearing off her rails against a projecting stone. As they lifted, screeching in protest and snaking through the air, they skewered a sailor crouching for shelter near the bridge. His screams as the rusty iron stabbed into his stomach went unheard as Horambeb’s bow dug into the mud-bank ahead to fling everybody off their feet. Then her boilers blew and the engine became a tangled mass of steel and she slid to a steaming, spluttering, crackling halt with her nose on the mud, her stern sticking out at an angle of thirty degrees from the wall.

  Lieutenant Carter was still singing to himself as he drove LCT 11 towards the beach. Smoke enveloped his ship and nobody seemed to have spotted her yet so that he thought he might even get her ashore without being touched. They might actually give him a gong for it, and then he could go out and get happily drunk. Or even, he decided gaily, go home and strangle his wife.

  He heard the tanks start their engines and caught the smell of exhaust fumes, and saw turret lids clang shut. There were only a hundred yards to go now and the well-deck was full of blue smoke. It was going to be a piece of cake. His song grew louder.

  ‘Pin a rose in your permanent wave,

  The navy’s at the door.

  There’s cider down the eiderdown -’

  But at that moment LCT 11 burst from the smoke and the crew of the 75 at Mas el Bub saw her. The gun barrel swung and, even as Carter saw the muzzle flash, the shell hit the side of the bridge. The wheelhouse, together with Lieutenant Carter’s plans and his song, seemed to disintegrate in a blood-red blur as the place fell in on him. The signaller standing alongside him, together with the helmsman and the twenty-year-old first lieutenant fell in a heap. As Carter dragged himself to his knees, he saw that the wheelhouse was on fire and the signaller’s clothes were already burning. The first lieutenant’s head, the steel helmet still in place, was at the opposite side of the wheelhouse, staring at the body it belonged to with an expression of startled bewilderment, and the helmsman was so peppered with splinters he looked like a colander oozing blood through every hole.

  The wheel was spinning and the landing craft’s head was beginning to fall off, so that she was aimed now towards the cliffs instead of the slipway. Carter could hear shouts from the well deck in front of him where the soldiers were staring anxiously back towards the bridge. Grimly he struggled to his feet and grasped the wheel to bring the head round again. Then he realized that something was soaking the front of his uniform, and with his free hand he pawed clumsily at his body. Curiously, he didn’t feel any great pain, but as he stared at the palm of his hand, glistening and red with his own blood, he knew he was badly wounded somewhere.

  Automatically, he started to sing again, in the same tuneless monotone he always used.
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  ‘When I get out of the navy

  What a wonderful wife I’ll make - ‘

  Staring ahead, he started a mad conversation with the dead men around him. ‘Proper cock we made of that one, Number One,’ he said, uncertain whether to address the first lieutenant’s head or his body. ‘And what a bloody helmsman! Lying down on the job!’

  Another shell burst near the bridge and the blast knocked him to his knees. Down below in the well the soldiers were crouching with their heads down.

  ‘Officers don’t worry me - not much,’ Carter sang as he dragged himself to his feet again. ‘The bastards’ll pay for this, Number One. If I don’t get a medal for this night’s work I’ll shit in the admiral’s hat, you see!’

  They were almost on the beach now, and the crew of the 75, unable to depress the barrel of the gun any further, had switched back to Umberto. The 47 by the slipway picked them up instead. Its first shell screamed over them but the second hit the bow and the air became full of singing splinters, and steel peeled back as if it were the rind of an orange. Someone started screaming in the well deck and, unable to see properly for the blood that streamed into his eyes from a wound on his head, Carter made out the rusty loom of a wrecked freighter on the beach. As he felt the bow of the landing craft scrape the sand, he knew he’d arrived. A petty officer started to lower the ramp but the shell on the bows had cut the chains and it fell with a crash into the shallow water.