Freefall

by Robert Radcliffe

  Irrepressible, Pip is. I don’t know how he does it: cheerful, positive, optimistic – it’s enough to drive you mad. Or even more cussed.

  ‘Negatively, or realistically?’ I bleat. ‘They thrashed us at Arnhem, remember. And since arriving in Germany I don’t get the impression they’re throwing in the towel.’

  ‘Maybe not. But the point is, we mustn’t give that impression either.’

  ‘Ah. Stiff upper lip and all that.’

  ‘Yes, Dan, all that. It’s vital they sense we’re confident. All of us.’

  ‘Hmm.’ We slog on in silence. I tug up the collar of my greatcoat; litter blows across the compound while the mud squelches from our boots. I can guess what’s coming next, and would rather it didn’t.

  ‘How’s your boy?’

  And there it is. The rub, the nub, the nexus of my discontent. Theodor Victor Trickey, still here, still alive, still haunting me. He’s not my boy! I want to shout, I don’t know him, wish I’d never heard of him, so leave me alone!

  ‘Stable. So I believe.’

  ‘You haven’t seen him?’

  ‘Not for a day or two.’ Five, in fact.

  ‘I hear he’s awake. Taking nourishment.’

  ‘Not really.’ The eyes open, the patient swallows when force-fed. But no words come, no recognition, no awareness. ‘Catatonic. Or something like it.’

  ‘You should see him. Spend time with him.’

  But I don’t want to spend time with him. He’s a curse, a millstone round my neck like that bloody albatross. But for him I’d be enjoying Christmas at Stalag 357, or even at home after escaping. Instead he’s dragged me back to rot in this dump. And for what? He doesn’t speak or cry out or make faces or do anything; he’s a living corpse and has been since we found him at the Schoonoord. ‘Remember the Chinese proverb,’ Colonel Alford cautioned me, back at Apeldoorn, ‘if you save a man’s life you’re responsible for it for ever.’ How I laughed it off back then. Not now.

  ‘Orderlies will call me if there’s any change.’

  ‘That’s not the point.’ Pip stops suddenly. ‘You should spend time with him because he’s leaving.’

  I’m shocked; it’s no use pretending otherwise. ‘Leaving where?’

  ‘Down south. Some place called Ulm. Orders from the Medical Directorate.’

  Moving again. Mysterious orders again. That sense of unknown forces at work. Again. ‘But when?’

  ‘Soon. And there’s more. Möglich says they’ve requested a medic too, a qualified doctor. To make up the numbers down there.’

  ‘I don’t want it. Send someone else.’

  ‘Gladly. Every doctor here would kill for this posting. Myself included. Anything to get away from this place.’

  ‘Then—’

  ‘But he’s your patient, Dan’ – he rests a hand on my arm – ‘so you get first refusal. And I think you should go, for your wellbeing as well as his.’

  And everyone else’s too, I sense.

  ‘Sleep on it? Will you?’

  ‘Yes, but...’

  ‘Good. Let me know.’ He turns to go. ‘You should write about him as well! He’s got a tale to tell for sure.’ He plods away through the mud. ‘And go see him. That’s an order!’

  4/5 April 1941

  Dearest Lu,

  I have no idea if the date is right. We’ve been attacking for days now in the endless desert and I have lost all idea of space or time, nor have I slept these past nights. Things are going well, our main force is forward after a 220-mile march over the sand and rock. We’ve been attacking since the 31st. There’s alarm among my superiors in Tripoli and Rome, probably in Berlin too. But I took the risk against orders because the opportunity was too favourable to miss. We’ve already reached our first objectives; next I must push on east then tackle Tobruk. The British are falling over themselves to get away, while our casualties are small. Though tired I am well; you need not worry. I send loving best wishes to you and Manfred.

  Erwin

  Unknown to him, the bustling Libyan port of Tobruk would come to dominate Erwin Rommel’s Africa campaign. Occupied by a sizeable Allied garrison, and strategically placed midway between Tunisia and Egypt, Tobruk was heavily fortified with walled defences, anti-tank ditches, minefields and pillboxes, plus natural cliffs and escarpments providing extra protection to landward. Being a peninsula enabled resupply from sea and also favoured the defender. Attacking it would be no trivial matter, Rommel knew, but to achieve his goal of taking Libya, and seizing Egypt with its ports of Alexandria, Said and the vital Suez Canal, taking Tobruk was imperative.

  Arriving in Tripoli soon after Operation Colossus in February 1941 he immediately set about the task. Hastening eastwards through Libya he surprised the British, who, weakened by the transfer of troops to Greece, duly retreated, almost to Benghazi, three hundred miles west of Tobruk. There he was supposed to pause and regroup, but eager to maintain momentum he urged his Italian superior General Gariboldi to press on. Gariboldi refused and an angry exchange took place. At its height a signalman entered and handed Rommel a message from Berlin. It reminded him to use tact and discretion in his dealings with the Italians. Knowing Gariboldi could read no German he waved the message: ‘Discretion, you see, Generale?’ He pointed. ‘The Führer leaves it to my discretion!’

  He resumed the advance, retaking Benghazi, Derna and then Gazala, steadily forcing the British eastwards. They seemed disorganized and nervous, he noted, over-estimating his strength and repeatedly withdrawing rather than risking defeat. They often replaced their generals too, a sure sign of disarray. When they did offer resistance the fighting could be hard and the desert conditions merciless. Tanks overheated and broke down, artillery jammed, convoys became mired in sand, and his men, roasting by day, freezing by night, constantly short of fuel, water, food and ammunition, were soon close to exhaustion. But Rommel kept driving them on and ultimately his long-honed methods – move fast, strike hard, don’t stop – prevailed yet again.

  Within two months of arriving in Africa he’d driven the British out of Libya and back into Egypt. Given the paucity of resources, unfamiliarity with conditions, and general lack of support, this was a remarkable achievement, the product of tactical mastery and sheer force of personality. And as before, with victory in his pocket his critics were silenced, the recriminations shelved, and the flouted orders conveniently forgotten. Hitler wrote congratulating him, Mussolini too, Germany rejoiced, Britain lamented, even General Gariboldi was grudgingly mollified.

  Up to a point. For there remained just one blot on the newly drawn landscape, like a boil on an otherwise smooth cheek. Tobruk, which was still stubbornly in Allied hands. And no minor blot either; with its deep-water harbour, formidable defences and 36,000-strong garrison, Rommel knew Tobruk held the key to the conquest of North Africa, and must be taken. His instincts, as always, told him to take it now, before the enemy could regroup. But after weeks of gruelling campaigning, his Afrika Korps was in depleted condition, thinly stretched, under-equipped and badly in need of rest. Prudence dictated he wait, and rearm, and recover strength. Yet each night the Allies shipped more supplies into Tobruk: more tanks and artillery, more ammunition and food, and more men, so the longer he delayed the harder the task ahead. Expedience told him to strike.

  So he struck, committing the full might of the Afrika Korps in an all-out assault. For several days and nights the battle raged, fighting was fierce and casualties ran high. The defenders, mainly British, Australian and Indian, showed grit and determination, while his German boys fought bravely too. But their Italian counterparts, so vital in making up the numbers, were unreliable and weak, fleeing or surrendering at the first sign of trouble, and in the end this swung the pendulum against him. After six days the attack failed and he was forced to withdraw. Rommel was shocked. For the first time in a major confrontation he’d got it wrong, misjudged the situation and received a bloody nose for it. He fell back along the coast to regroup. Probing raids contin
ued, artillery barrages and air attacks too, but to little avail; days turned to weeks and what began as an assault developed into a siege. Running short of supplies, he begged Berlin for more – more tanks, more aircraft, more guns and more men – but with the invasion of Russia looming nobody had time for his African sideshow. Instead they sent a general, Friedrich Paulus, to reason with him and calm the situation. Paulus arrived to find Rommel in high agitation, busily preparing another attack. ‘Tobruk is unassailable,’ Paulus said, studying the plans, ‘we should seal it off, blockade it, and wait for improved circumstances.’ But Rommel wasn’t listening. ‘We can take it,’ he assured Paulus, ‘a hard strike, a concerted effort, proper support from the Italians and all will be well.’

  Reluctantly Paulus conceded. The second attack went ahead, and it failed like the first. Suddenly Tobruk stopped being a sideshow and began taking on global significance. Paulus was recalled to Berlin to explain, German High Command banned further action against the port; Churchill, meanwhile, sensing opportunity, ordered his latest general, Archibald Wavell, to seize the initiative, advance west from Egypt and catch Rommel on the hop. Wavell tentatively complied; Rommel hurried east to confront him, weeks of bitter fighting followed and he drove the British back again. Wavell was duly sacked and replaced by a new general, Auchinleck, while Rommel, by now ill and exhausted, withdrew to regroup. A few weeks’ welcome rest then befell both sides; the summer of 1941 was marked by sporadic fighting and structural reorganization. Auchinleck fashioned the Western Desert Force into a new army, 8th Army, under the command of yet another general called Cunningham, while Rommel was promoted to lead a larger force, Panzergruppe Afrika, and finally sent the reinforcements he’d begged for. Recuperating at his seaside headquarters, the British secure on the Egyptian border and his Panzergruppe growing daily in strength, his thoughts inevitably returned to the coming season’s campaign, the push into Egypt and on to Suez. And to achieve this, he must first settle the Tobruk matter, once and for all.

  *

  That evening, and only because Pip Smith ordered it, I visit Theo Trickey. Approaching the infirmary in the gathering dusk it’s no use denying the dread I feel, for Theo has come to represent the utter misery of this war, and my miserable role in it, a role which has been going steadily downhill ever since I jumped from a Dakota fifteen weeks ago. As though in that moment my life changed and I became some other being, some existential anomaly like that poor ancient mariner, doomed for eternity. As Coleridge puts it:

  I moved, and could not feel my limbs:

  I was so light – almost

  I thought that I had died in sleep,

  And was a blessèd ghost.

  My ghost lies in a room for the most seriously ill, of which there are now very few. Swaddled in blankets against the cold, in effect he’s been in this state, unconscious and unresponsive, for over three months. The orderlies turn him to avoid bed sores and efforts are made to massage and exercise his limbs, but these are futile gestures, and basically he’s wasting to a husk before our eyes. I crouch beside him, studying the sunken cheeks, the pale pursed lips, the Slavonic slant to his closed eyes and wonder, seriously, whether I did right to save him, or whether I was just prolonging his suffering for my own vain ends. Because Anna asked me to and I wanted to impress her. It’s a sobering notion. First do no harm, the doctor’s oath decrees, first do no harm. How much harm have I done by insisting his lifeless body keep breathing? I reach out, brushing the hair from his brow, and recall the night we found him in the garden among the dead. There were others during that battle, I know, carried out while still alive because their injuries were too severe to treat. Some were even conscious. ‘Am I dying, Doc?’ was a question we too frequently heard. Try answering it. A shared cigarette, a shot of morphia, a squeeze of the hand, and they were soon slipping away. Try and save him, Anna had said, yet never said why. Perhaps I should write, as promised, and ask her. I glance around, sniffing at the disinfectant odour of the sick. The room is dim and silent, only two other beds occupied, shadowy humps deeply asleep from sedatives. Outside all is quiet save the sigh of winter wind and the distant barking of a dog. Soon the guards will come for lock-up, and I will return to Pip and the others for another sleepless night on the slats. Alive yet dead, like Theo and those others. I close my eyes, kneeling now, barely aware my hand is moving from his brow to touch his nose and lips. ‘I’m sorry,’ I whisper. His breaths are warm and shallow on my fingers. My thumb and forefinger close over his nose, my palm pressing more firmly on his mouth.

  ‘I’m sorry.’

  I press harder.

  His eyes open.

  A creak comes from behind.

  The eyes stare up at me, tar-black and gleaming.

  ‘Doc?’

  ‘I... What?’

  ‘Thought I might find you here.’

  ‘Sergeant Bowyer?’

  ‘Saying goodbye...’

  ‘What?’ I snatch my hand back. ‘Er, no, nothing...’

  ‘Not you.’ He chuckles. ‘Me.’

  I shake my head. ‘I don’t understand...’

  He drops to a squat beside me. I smell tobacco and carbolic soap. His boots are polished, his face clean-shaven. ‘I’m off. Come to say goodbye.’

  ‘What – you mean, transferred?’

  ‘No.’ He glances at the door. ‘Off. As in getting out of it.’

  The penny drops. ‘Christ, you mean escaping!’

  ‘Yes but you could keep your bloody voice down.’

  He’s going under the wire, he explains. Rumours are circulating about orderlies being moved to POW camps far to the east, in Poland. These camps are large, purpose-built and allegedly escape-proof. Patrolling guards, dogs, machine-gun towers, searchlights, the lot, he says. Hundreds of miles from friendly borders too, so once there the likelihood is you’re there for good. Stalag XIB may be a hellhole, he goes on, but it has advantages, namely its location in western Europe, its proximity to the North Sea and the Baltic, and its wire that is vulnerable. ‘North corner ain’t dug in properly. Five minutes’ digging, couple of snips, and we’re out. Tonight.’

  I’m astounded, and impressed, and oddly forlorn. Jack Bowyer, the man I jumped into Arnhem with, worked through the carnage of the Schoonoord with, performed surgery on a train with, lived, slept and ate with, cheerfully insolent Jack, always ready with a jibe, a cigarette and a joke, is leaving.

  ‘Well, my God, that’s... marvellous,’ I stammer. ‘Who?’

  ‘Me and George Stebbings. Loose floorboard in the hut washroom: we can squeeze through. There’s bikes at the railway station. Plan is to pinch a couple, pedal to Bremerhaven by night and jump a ship.’

  ‘Sounds good. What can I do? Do you need anything?’ I recall my own escape kit: map, compass, food, blanket, money – so painstakingly assembled, so quickly superfluous.

  ‘Thanks, Doc, but we’re all set.’

  Shouting from afar, the banging of shutters. ‘We’d better get back.’

  ‘Too right.’ We rise; he hesitates. ‘Wish me luck?’

  ‘God, yes, Jack, all the very best of luck, to you both.’

  ‘You too.’ He shakes my hand, grinning in the half-light. ‘Goodbye, Dan. You’re a pretty useless soldier, you know.’

  ‘Ah, well, yes I do.’

  ‘But a damn fine doc.’ He nods at Theo. ‘He’s the living proof.’

  *

  Erwin Rommel’s third assault on Tobruk was set for November 1941, a full six months after the second, so humiliatingly overseen by General Paulus. This time he was determined to succeed. His build-up was slow and measured, his planning meticulous, his Panzergruppe Afrika strong, hungry for action and carefully deployed. Even the Italians were ready, properly organized and eager for the fray. Air cover was not ideal, and keeping his forces supplied was always a challenge, but these matters would be overcome. Overall he was satisfied, and confident. This time there would be no failures and no mistakes; everyone knew exactly what to do, when
to do it, and how.

  Including Winston Churchill unfortunately, for, unknown to Rommel, British codebreakers had been successfully decrypting German radio signals for months, including those detailing his plans for Tobruk. Churchill therefore instructed his latest Africa chief Claude Auchinleck to make plans of his own, and just one week before Rommel’s assault, he unleashed them in Operation Crusader, a bold scheme to relieve Tobruk using the new 8th Army. Splitting this force in two, Auchinleck ordered General Cunningham to advance west from Egypt, the aim being to encircle Panzergruppe Afrika and then link up with Tobruk’s defenders as they broke out of the city. Crusader launched on 18 November; Rommel responded, cancelling his own offensive and wheeling to confront this new threat. Days of fighting followed with artillery barrages, air strikes and fast-moving battles between tanks and armoured columns. Keeping abreast of events became difficult: soon the situation was fragmented and confused; nobody knew where the front line was or who held which objective. Rommel as usual was everywhere at once, charging across the desert in his staff car or flying his own spotter plane over the field of battle. One day he landed it and made for a makeshift HQ, only to realize that the tents there were British. Another day his car was strafed and he was thrown out, badly bruising his chest and abdomen. On another he drove to a town to visit his wounded, strode into the hospital and found it full of injured New Zealanders. ‘Do you need anything?’ he asked their medics, without batting an eye. Bemused, they gave him a list and he left, promising to return.

  The fighting went on, losses mounted, yet he sensed Cunningham’s advance was faltering. Furthermore, pleasingly, the Italians were repelling the break-out from Tobruk. It looked like Crusader was failing. He telephoned Berlin. ‘Now is the moment to attack,’ he urged, ‘detach two Panzer divisions, drive towards Egypt, circle behind the enemy and cut off the entire 8th Army.’ The idea was spectacularly ambitious, even by Rommel’s standards, and fraught with risk. Berlin was sceptical, Rome too, and even his own officers voiced doubts. ‘Nobody knows the British situation,’ they said, ‘their advance might have slowed but they’re not beaten. Nor is Tobruk fully secure. Anyway there aren’t supplies enough to sustain such an excursion – especially fuel.’ But Rommel was adamant, and compelling, and the possibility of annihilating the British too tempting a prize for Berlin to refuse. The counter-attack was approved.