Take or Destroy!
Page 29
The desert looked rinsed and cool as the rain died away. As they had moved on again in fresh implacable sunshine on the 9th, it soon became clear that nobody was bothering about Qaba out on its little peninsula to the north, and the idea of returning to it as somewhere to recuperate grew stronger in their minds. When they reached Ibrahimiya, they saw the burned-out trucks of Baldissera’s command still containing what they had always flippantly called soldati fritti; empty flapping tents; and blackened, wind-ripped aircraft, with bent propellers, broken backs and shattered wings, for once all bearing the hated swastika. Along the southern perimeter, past a knocked-out 88, its endless barrel like a fallen pine, a vast column of prisoners was trudging into captivity with doped rhythmic steps and weary stony faces. The dust from the drying desert rose in a great cloud from their feet as they plodded along four abreast, an endless crocodile stretching away to both horizons, only an armoured car and a few British privates shouting in mixed English, Arabic and Italian alongside.
Among them was Private Bontempelli. His guess had been a good one. Baldissera and his few remaining men had been ordered south to stop the British advance -- and this time Bontempelli had gone with them. No one had argued when Baldissera, his knees showing through his torn trousers, had stepped forward to surrender to the first tanks that appeared. ‘Sono prigioneri,’ he had said unhappily. ‘Ci arrendiamo. Tedeschi non bono. Viva I’Inghilterra.’
The morning was bleak and the wind whipped at the yellow grass. The marching men were unkempt and dirty, their steel helmets down over their eyes to break the force of the wind, their hands blotched with desert sores. Staring at them, the survivors of Cut-Price were surprised to find they felt no sense of triumph, even though they knew the war in North Africa was nearing its end. All they could feel was the tragedy of hunger, wounds and defeat, and a deep concern for their own safety because they, too, were fatigued and tacky-socked; men of dirt and tatters, their beards dusty, their red-rimmed eyes glaring into the sun, feeling they could sleep for a hundred years.
From the top of the hill, Qaba seemed a place of utter desolation, the empty Italian camps containing abandoned boxes of half-packed clothes and tables bearing half-eaten food. A few Italian tanks stood where they’d run out of petrol, and in breaches in sandbagged walls men lay crumpled or grotesquely spread-eagled. A few mules and an occasional dog nosed mournfully among the debris in search of food or water and, half-hidden by the blown sand that covered corpses, carcasses of dead animals and broken machinery, there were millions of cartridge clips, belts of ammunition, rifles, machine-guns, hand grenades, rolls of wire, pieces of clothing and equipment, lifted mines, batteries and blackened piles of ruined metal. The chirping crickets and the rustling of letters blowing among the thorn bushes provided the only sound.
The town was a maze of broken tottering buildings, its white walls stained with scorch marks so that they frowned with embarrassment at the terrible destruction they had wrought. Nobody stopped the lorries as they moved in. A few Arabs demanded cigarettes and a few Italians appeared holding white flags. The grimy men divested them of their watches and wallets and marched them in groups to the POW compound they had built for the British. There they found Swann, still seeking excuses; Bradshaw, who had come to realize he would probably be deaf for the rest of his life; and Sugarwhite, bent double now but grinning and shouting, ‘It took you long enough’ - a determined card to the bitter end. Hickey and Carell were still in the bunker, surrounded by millions of flies attracted by the smell of blood. The Egyptian girl was with them now, but Amos had disappeared.
Opposite naval headquarters, von Steen, Hrabak and Tarnow, determined to do the thing with dignity, had lined up what remained of the garrison outside the ruins of the Boujaffar. A huge ventilator, which had peered myopically at the world from the deck of Giuseppe Bianchi, lay by the remains of the front door, along with a dead mule and a car which had been blown on to its side.
As the lorries stopped, von Steen saluted, not a Nazi salute but a naval salute. Hockold’s men stared back at him not without sympathy because there was something they all possessed but could not communicate to each other. The war correspondents in London and Berlin were describing them to their readers as ‘Our boys’, shining heroes bursting with enthusiasm, when in fact most of them hated the war, and would much have preferred to have been drunk or full of food or in bed with a girl. Exhausted and dried-out, their bodies bruised by battle, their brains addled by the sun, their skins abrasive under the dust and mud, they had no high notions of glory. All they wanted was to win the war and go home to the wife and kids and English beer.
Hockold accepted von Steen’s pistol without comment. Then, as the Germans were marched away to join the other men in the POW compound, Murdoch raised his eyebrows in a question.
Hockold nodded and turned to Curtiss.
‘Contact Eighth Army,’ he ordered. ‘Tell them we’re in possession of Qaba.’
Table of Contents
TAKE OR DESTROY!
Map
Part 1 - The Plan
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
Part 2 - The Raid
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11