Killing Rommel (15 page)

Book Four

The Desert Fox

16

THE OPERATION returns to its original plan: strike east, penetrating from the rear the German and Italian formations west of Alamein.

One day's travel, cut short by a sandstorm, takes us to Bir al Khamsa south of Sofafi; a day in place for repairs, then two nights over good going (daytime is too dangerous now; the skies are solid with Axis fighters and bombers) carry the patrols to Bir El Ensor, forty miles south of Fuka, marked on LRDG maps as “Sore Thumb” for its jutting limestone outcrop. Here Jake establishes a base with two trucks from his own R1 patrol, including the medical vehicle with Captain Lawson and one wireless truck that has stripped second and third gears and must be repaired anyway. The heavyweight clashes at Alamein lie forty miles east along the thirty-mile front between the Qattara Depression and the sea. With nightfall, we can see the big guns flashing along the horizon. Jake passes the word for all patrol commanders and NCOs to assemble.

For the first time, I am called forward and asked to contribute. Our assault parties, Jake says, will move up this night into their advance positions; they will be penetrating Axis formations within forty-eight hours. “Give us an idea of the types of security formations we're likely to run into, and your best surmise as to where Rommel will be and what he'll do.”

Briefly I describe the tactics and configurations employed by the Afrika Korps in advance and retreat and at night when they leaguer. I have already prepared a document on this subject, as I noted earlier, which was distributed to these same officers and NCOs back at Faiyoum. Most of them probably studied it then but have forgotten the body of it by now. So I go through it again. I describe how Axis supply columns come up after dark, replenishing the tanks and artillery in the forward positions. Mayne confirms this from his recent penetration. He's getting impatient. He wants to know where Rommel will be. When I answer, “Up front,” he laughs and observes that we didn't need an RAC officer to tell us that.

The whole idea of a formal plan strikes Mayne as ridiculous. His notion is to brazen it out. Broad daylight. Go in big as life.

His teams had no trouble infiltrating in their recent forays, Mayne says, and once inside the German and Italian formations they roamed at will. “If our Directional Finding chaps can put us on to Rommel, by heaven, we'll make sure he gets a hero's funeral.”

“That's your plan?” Jake asks. “A bit vague, isn't it?”

“Vague is good,” says Mayne. “The vaguer the better.”

He's got a point. Flexibility. Improvisation.

“It's going to be one big balls-up anyway, Jake. Let our men go in and take a rip at it.”

At midnight, the three patrols start east. By dawn Jake has got them within fifteen miles of the front, spread out and netted-over on a ridge that he describes as a “prominent feature” but that Punch calls “a knoll the size of a tit.” Jake sites our T3 vehicles on the southern shoulder. His design is this:

At moonrise, seven of the nine trucks—Jake's and Nick's patrols, plus Collie's jeep and Conyngham's Guns truck from ours—will continue east until they have set up immediately in the enemy rear. Mayne and his SAS teams will have gone ahead; they'll already be there. At the last minute, Collie decides to switch with Conyngham, giving Conyngham and Holden the jeep and taking the weapons vehicle for himself. From here on, he says, firepower will be more crucial to the mission than mobility. The remaining two trucks in our T3 patrol, mine and Grainger's wireless (minus Sergeant Wannamaker, who will go forward with the main party, and Standage, who'll man the Breda gun on Collie's truck), will establish a covering position, here where we are. Our role will be to serve as a combination rallying point and mobile reserve; to provide cover for all vehicles fleeing towards Sore Thumb; and to pick up any stragglers whose trucks get shot up or disabled in the getaway.

Jake's and Nick's patrols and Collie make ready in the moonlight. After a feed and a brew and a final wireless exchange with HQ, they start up and roll out in two columns. We wish them God speed. Their dust and the sound of their engines recede into the dark.

My truck and Grainger's are alone now. I've got Punch and Oliphant; Grainger has Marks and Durrance. We dig in on the reverse slope, spading out a shallow gun pit, into which both trucks burrow and over which we rig camouflage netting and as much brush as we can gather. The trucks' business ends are their rears, over the tailboards, where the guns can fire most effectively. These we position facing east. We clear boulders from the pit rim to protect against ricochets, then bank the parapet with bagged sand, the best shock absorber for bullets or artillery shells. Grainger erects the aerial thirty feet downslope. No enemy had better creep up behind us in daylight, because the damn thing will be visible for five miles. We must be in wireless contact, though, not only with Jake and Nick but with HQ and possibly even with the RAF.

As the stars come out, I gather the men and go over scenarios. A stew of bully with rice and curry is chased by hot sweet tea and lime cocktail with a double tot of rum. The men are ready. I send Punch and Oliphant down the east face of the ridge to find a way forward and mark it, so we don't nose-dive over some unseen drop-off if we have to race to somebody's rescue. Grainger and I scout a getaway lane to the west. I order all guns cleaned and oiled one last time, belts and magazines checked, all rounds aligned. We go over jam drills. I stress again that when action starts, firepower is everything. “Keep shooting. Maintain controlled, well-aimed bursts. Don't burn up the barrels. But, no matter what, keep firing.”

These are the kinds of orders men like to hear. This is good. I'm happy. A bond is forming between me and Punch and Grainger and Oliphant. It's happening in this moment. I can feel it. As the first watch stands to, I sit with two blankets round my shoulders and my back resting against a rear tyre of Te Aroha IV, with a mug of hot tea on the sand and my notebook on my lap.

Dearest Rose,

Nestled on a desert knoll which on a proper evening would make a delightful picnic site. Unfortunately this night we're freezing our backsides…

I assign myself the last watch and bed down under the stars. I wake on my own, one minute before Oliphant shakes my shoulder. The moon is down. I'm so cold I can barely move. Time for the wireless.

“Wake Grainger. Tell him to get his ears on.”

All hands are astir by 0430. A thick mist muffles sound. The men huddle in their greatcoats with wool caps pulled tight over their ears. I mount to the ridge with Punch and Oliphant; we strain like owls into the fog.

The terrain is rolling scrub with numerous low ridges, of which ours is the most prominent, rising about thirty feet from the desert floor. False crests abound, leaving great swathes of dead ground. Tamarisk and creosote bushes grow with some density, broken by stony depressions, stripped by the wind, which stand out almost as if they were paved. You could snug down a regiment among the folds. Oliphant is just asking whether he can risk a smoke under cover, when we hear engines.

“Quiet!”

Grainger kills the radio.

“Which direction?”

We can't tell.

“Our blokes?”

“East,” says Oliphant, pointing in the direction our Eighth Army will be coming from. The problem is Rommel's Panzers will be coming from there too. Engine sound swells and fades. If it's diesel, it's German. We can't tell yet. A thousand yards and getting louder. I send Oliphant and Durrance to pack up the aerial, chop-chop. The other four of us hurry to our guns. My heart is hammering. If the approaching force is German, do we shoot it out and get ourselves killed, or elect the better part of valour and beat it out of here? I order both engines started and all camouflage lines tugged loose, ready to run. We crank all four guns round towards the advancing motor sound.

“There!” cries Oliphant.

Headlights. Blackouts with cat's-eye slits. A motorcycle and sidecar bucks over a crest a hundred and fifty yards south. Oliphant and Durrance are caught in the open. In the dark, the bike doesn't see them. It roars on, followed by another and another.

“BMWs,” says Punch. “I know the sound.”

“Are you sure?” I sign to hold fire.

“750s, horizontal twins. German as sauerkraut.”

Oliphant and Durrance have plunged flat on the sand. The seventeen-foot aerial masts tower over them.

A motorcycle column churns past, each bike following the others' tracks without glancing right or left.

“Get that aerial down!” As Oliphant and Durrance scramble, we hear a new rumble from the southern end of the ridge. Before any of us can react, another motorcycle with sidecar heaves into view, sees us and makes straight for us. The bike roars up and brakes in a cyclone of dust. The machine, I note, is not a chain-drive but shaft-driven. Cycle and riders are caked with grit and look done in. The driver tugs his goggles back.

“Wohin sind sie gefahren?”
he demands. Where have they gone?

I cup a hand to my ear.
“Was?”

“In welche Richtung sind die Krads gefahren?”

I point west. Driver and gunner take off.

A German scout car bucks past, three hundred yards south, then another the same distance north. Daimlers, with their bowler-hat crowns. Oliphant and Durrance scamper back to the wireless truck, breaking down the aerial masts and stowing them into their carrying cradles. We can see more scout cars to the south, rumbling cautiously across the undulating, still-dark ground. Punch and I peer east over the crest. Mist obscures all sight beyond a few hundred yards, but there's no mistaking the growl of diesel engines—big ones, Mark III and IV Panzers, not the light Mark IIs that sound like trucks. I order camouflage nets down and stuffed into the truckbed. “Stand by, ready to move.”

There's nowhere to go.

Within minutes, the area round our post has become a hive of Afrika Korps troops and transport. The build-up happens so suddenly and so matter-of-factly that we almost feel like Germans ourselves. At least a dozen lorries—half of them captured British Bedfords—roll past our site, following the trail broken by the motorcyclists. Behind them appear more waves of trucks and guns.

Oliphant mans his Browning. “What the hell do we do now?”

“Move with them.”

To fight is suicide. Sitting still will only get us spotted.

“Find a cloud of dust and get inside it.”

We rumble several miles in convoy. Every vehicle but ours is stencilled with the palm-tree-and-swastika insignia of the Afrika Korps. Thank God for the dust and the pre-dawn murk. Suddenly the column begins slowing. German military police have laid out a stop line; with hand signals they are directing units into positions. “They're setting up,” calls Punch.

“Set up with them. Find a spot.”

Here come the tanks we heard before. We can see them as the mist disperses, advancing in column on the flat to the south. Thirty, forty, fifty of them. Round us and in front of us, Afrika Korps NCOs have dismounted from their vehicles; they're selecting positions, manoeuvring trucks and gun tractors, directing their men to dig in. Signalmen run wire between posts. Anti-tank guns appear—enormous, wicked-looking 88s and squat, lethal Pak 38s, towed by half-track lorries and tractors.

We're hunting for a spot to blend in. “There?” asks Punch.

A Spandau machine-gun crew beat us to it.

“Go left.”

More infantry digging in.

“There!”

We squat down between two hummocks. “Now what?” calls Oliphant.

“Play along.”

We dismount. Whatever Rommel's troopers are doing, we do too. A mortar crew begin setting up a hundred yards to our rear; a machine-gun post appears fifty yards on our flank. In minutes both have set up and sandbagged. In front, the crew of an 88, joined by mates from a half-track towing vehicle and a three-ton ammo truck, are digging a gun pit and rigging camouflage nets. We net up too. I smell sausage. Punch points.

“Look there, sir. The bastards are cooking breakfast.”

We smell porridge and ersatz coffee. The Germans, we note, fry up using the same kind of sand-and-petrol stoves we do.

“Do the same, Punch.”

“Sir?”

“Work up some grub. Act natural.”

What preserves us in the midst of the enemy camp is the universal desert garb worn by both sides—greatcoats and khaki trousers in the chill, with peaked caps, scarves and sand goggles. In addition, both armies have captured and put into service so many enemy vehicles that our Chevrolets look no more out of place than the Afrika Korps–ised Fords, Macks and Marmon-Herringtons that trundle past us, left, right and centre. Ours look like theirs and theirs look like ours.

Still, we're scared witless. Somehow getting spied out seems worse than being killed in action. Simultaneously the fright is offset by the theatricality, even absurdity, of the situation. We feel like schoolboys pulling a prank. As the minutes pass and we sizzle up our bacon with no enemy catching us out or even taking any notice, an odd sort of exhilaration begins to take hold. “Hell,” says Grainger, “do I dare have a crap?” And he does—“taking a spade for a walk” between our post and the 88 gun position two hundred yards ahead.

At 0630 exactly, the British barrage begins. This clearly is why the Germans are withdrawing. The shells land at first harmlessly in vacant desert, then begin walking westwards, towards us. These are not little 25-pounders but serious stuff, medium and heavy guns. No one moves. The foe have dug in and snugged down. “Damn!” says Punch. “How long d'you reckon these heroes are going to sit tight?”

I've got another concern. Clearly this pullback will alter Rommel's location—and that of Jake and Nick and our SAS teams. My role was to man a position covering our men's withdrawal. All that has changed now. What must we do? How can we help? Plan A is obviously obsolete.