Killing Rommel (9 page)

Eighth Army continued to fall back. When you saw the wrecks of Crusaders or Grants or Honeys, the cause was rarely enemy fire. Typically the tanks packed up due to mechanical breakdowns, collisions or mishaps, or they ran out of fuel. When a tank became disabled, its crew's standing orders were to destroy it so that it could not be salvaged by the enemy. But it's no small chore to scupper a tank, even your own when it's sitting still. Half the time our lads simply made off with the breech blocks and code papers, bashed in the wirelesses, then sluiced petrol into the engine box and chucked in a lighted match. Many didn't do even that. They just “ditched the bitch” and pissed off. German salvage crews towed off scores of functioning tanks and hundreds of lorries and guns. It was a scandal. Even the correspondents covered it up. Every intact Grant or Honey our retreating column rolled past elicited storms of profanity from troopers who knew they'd be facing these same machines again in a matter of days, with Axis crews manning them.

Our squadrons fell back along the coast road. My fears at that point were not for myself. I still believed, like every other imbecile, that I was bullet-and shell-proof. I feared for Rose, for her safety, and to let her know that I was all right. I was certain that the Navy would have evacuated her from Alexandria along with the intelligence office where she worked. But even in Cairo she would not be completely safe. I tried reaching her by phone each time we passed an outpost that still had wire communications. It was hopeless. Cairo was in panic; civilian and even military switchboards had ceased to function. On the coast road we had no idea who was in charge and no notion of any plan except to point our noses east and keep buggering on.

1430 26/6/42 Somewhere W of El Daba. Smoke, fire far as eye can see. Stukas dive-bombing all day, Henschels and Italian Macchis all night under flares. They fly right over the roadway. Why not? We are sitting ducks to them.

The retreat had become the world's champion traffic jam. For a hundred miles, the tarmac was nose-to-tail with lorries and guns, “quad” tractors and 2-pounders on portees, ambulances, armoured cars, ragtops and thin-skinners, tanks rumbling on transporters and under their own power.

In the jam, we hear rumours of Rommel sightings. One that proves true has the survivors of a British battery surrounded and refusing to surrender. The German captain who holds them besieged has captured a ranking British officer, Desmond Young (who later, as a brigadier, will write an outstanding book about Rommel) and is demanding at gunpoint that Young order these troops to lay down their arms. Young tells him to stuff it. Suddenly: a storm of dust, a staff car…Rommel himself appears. The captain spits out the story. The Desert Fox considers. “No,” says he. “Such a demand runs counter to chivalry and stands in opposition to the honourable conventions of war.” He tells the captain to solve the problem some other way, then shares with the captive Young a draught of cold tea with lemon from his own water bottle.

0800 27/6/42 Shunted off track by traffic control, mired behind vehicles in uncountable numbers. Downpour. Arabs sell us eggs. They want aluminium foil, I can't imagine why, and become ecstatic at the slightest scrap from our ration packing. Thank heaven for the RAF. Without them, the Luftwaffe would turn this road into a 100-mile graveyard.

More rumours of Rommel sightings. He's leading the Panzer assault in person, we hear, hard on our heels. “Why don't we despatch some of our bleedin' commando types to pot the bastard?” Such is the anthem of every trooper in the column. “Stonk the bugger! Let's see some action!”

1630 27/6/42 Pease's A-9 out of petrol. We siphon from an overturned lorry. A major pulls rank but I buy him out with 2 fivers and the Breitling watch my grandfather gave me. We get 12 gallons. Enough for 3 tanks to go 4 miles.

I still can't get through to Rose but manage to raise Jock on an infantry net. His Camerons, I learn, have been taken prisoner at Tobruk but Jock has got out with a convoy of Coldstreamers; he's in the same column we are, only a few miles east. Our HQers in Cairo, Jock says, are burning their code books; Mussolini himself has flown in from Italy, primed to enter the city in triumph like a Roman emperor.

Is defeat so close? Will Cairo fall? If Rommel takes Suez, Britain will be cut off from India and the Far East. Two hundred thousand men will go into the bag. Worse, Hitler will get his hands on the oilfields of Iraq and Arabia. Russia could fall or seek terms. The war could be lost at one swoop.

The only good news, says Jock, is that the farther the Germans push us east, the lengthier their own supply lines stretch from the port of Tripoli in the west. Tobruk, under attack by the RAF, is not yet operational, “Rommel has to truck his fuel over a thousand miles. Not even he can keep this advance up forever.”

2200 28/6/42 More rain. 5 miles in 13 hours. Ahead: minefields and the defensive box at El Alamein. Eighth Army will make its stand here, rumours say. Word is that Rommel has pulled up and stopped, 75 miles back. He's out of petrol too.

7

IT TOOK ME ten days to reach Rose. I could not get furlough, or even an overnight pass into Cairo.

Eighth Army was being reorganised top to bottom. What was left of our regiment remained under 22nd Armoured Brigade but was thrown in with an anti-tank company, a battery of 25-pounders and two depleted battalions of motorised infantry to make a new formation. We would be among a number of like units held in mobile reserve for when Rommel resumed his assault. What this meant immediately was new tanks, new crews and new training. I was stuck and so was everyone else. This was at Kabrit, where the Armoured Division was temporarily headquartered. Jock was there too. We ran into each other one night at a fuelling point called Dixie Eleven. Jock was a captain now, with a Military Cross on the way for his heroism in the breakout from Tobruk. He had spoken to Rose by phone two nights earlier. “She's well and I've told her you are too.”

To hear Rose was close made me even more desperate to see her.

“Where is she?”

“Still at Naval Intelligence. They've moved the office from Alex to Grey Pillars in Cairo. Don't worry. I've reassured her that you're fine and that she'll see you soon.”

“Will they evacuate her?”

“I don't know.”

The fuelling point was nothing but a half-circle of tankers parked under blackout lamps on a flat beneath the Muqattam hills, with queues of tanks, lorries, quads and Bren carriers snaking round hoping to suck up a few gallons. Petrol was supposed to be dispensed only by requisition and only at appointed hours, but a new order had arisen with the imminence of Rommel's assault; currency had become whisky and cigarettes, English pounds (not Egyptian currency), and running into friends who actually had requisitions and would let you pump a few gallons on their ticket before the indignation of others made them stop.

I asked Jock whether Rose had told him anything about the baby. My wife, as I said, was pregnant—nearly six months. “She's fine, Chap. Better than we are.” Jock's citation for valour had come with a twelve-hour pass. He gave it to me, to use to try to reach Rose.

I got through by phone the next morning; we made plans to meet at Shepheard's Hotel in Cairo in two days. As for Rose's own safety, she begged me not to be anxious; her section was being withdrawn to Haifa as soon as transport could be arranged.

Jock's pass turned out to be useless. You had to be cleared by your commanding officer. I couldn't get another. Phone lines had now been restricted to emergency calls only. Four more days went by; finally on the fifth, still unable to get through by telephone, I caught a ride in to Shepheard's, hoping against hope that Rose had left me a note.

She was there.

Everything they say about wartime romance is true. When I saw my bride, she was in the most unravishing pose possible—slouched against the wall in a windowless alcove, with both shoes off and her hair, which had become dishevelled when she had taken off her hat to adjust it, falling across one eye. She was in civilian clothes. She hadn't seen me yet. Shepheard's at that time was one of the most glamorous hotels in the world. The atmosphere of peril had been screwed to an almost unbearable pitch by Rommel's approach, rendering every sound and sensation precious. Amidst this stood Rose. I suppose every fellow must believe his sweetheart the most beautiful in the world. I rushed to her. We crashed together and hung on for dear life. “How long have you been here?”

“Every night. I knew you wouldn't be able to get a phone line.” We kissed crazily. “Are you all right, darling?”

“Me? Are
you
?”

She said she had got us a room. I pulled her to me. I felt her resist. For a moment I thought it was because of the baby. “There's something I have to tell you.”

She took a breath and straightened.

“It's Stein.”

I felt the floor open beneath me.

“He's dead,” Rose said. “The report came across my desk. I saw it.”

I felt as if all the air had been sucked out of the room. Rose told me she had tried to get a carbon of the report, but regulations forbade removing anything from the office.

“Let's get out of here,” I said.

We worked through the crush of the main salon. Some colonel was playing the grand piano. A group was singing a university song. Outside, the terrace was mobbed with drunken Aussies and South Africans. Gharries and taxis were coming and going. Two New Zealand majors, noting Rose's swollen belly and her state of agitation, stood at once and offered their table. When I shook their hands, I was trembling.

Stein had been killed, Rose said, at a place called Bir Hamet, south of Fuka. A high-explosive shell had taken him and two others. “I tracked down the reporting officer and made him confirm that he'd seen the event with his own eyes. I verified the name and checked it against all the rosters in Eighth Army. Captain Zachary Aaron Stein. There's no other.”

I put my arms round Rose. We downed two brandies as if they were water. Rose said that she had told Jock of Stein's death; he had known when he ran into me at the fuelling point. “He told me that when he saw you, he couldn't make himself deliver the news.”

My gallant Rose. “You're braver than any soldier.”

That Stein could die was a possibility I had never even considered. He was my mentor. He had saved my life. “It's like…” I said, “…like losing the war.”

The most important thing now was getting Rose out of harm's way. Palestine was no safer than Egypt. If Cairo fell, no place in the Middle East would be secure. I told Rose she must resign her post in the Code Office. She must go home.

She refused. She was needed here. “Do you imagine,” she said, “that home is any safer?”

She told me that Stein's remains were being held in the temporary morgue at Ksar-el-Nil barracks in the city centre. We decided to go. I am one of those who fends off shock by activity. I must see Stein's body. Identify it. I must get through to Stein's family and execute their wishes as soon and as best as I could. The hour was eight in the evening. Would the morgue even be open?

There are two public telephones at Shepheard's, in the corridor outside the bar. Queues of officers waited for both. One of them was Colonel L. Balls, I thought, this is all I need! L. had seen us. I introduced Rose. There was no getting out of it. When L. asked what errand we were on, there seemed no option but to tell him.

To my astonishment L. offered immediately to help. He had a car and driver; he would take us to Ksar-el-Nil straight away. He did, brushing aside the duty sergeant who tried to make us come back the next morning.

The morgue was two vast mess tents jiggered together in a square that had formerly been used for cavalry exercises. Only uniformed personnel were allowed in. L. offered to stay with Rose. I entered alone, escorted by a Graves Registry corporal. Two enormous diesel refrigeration units stood outside each entry. They had been switched off at night, the clerk said, to conserve fuel.

The dead, all officers, were laid out on tables and cots—any surface that could be put to use. “We had litters,” said the corporal, “but the Ambulance Corps took 'em.” He led me to two wrong corpses before finally locating Stein.

My friend's remains were laid out on a perforated steel sand-channel, the kind used by trucks and armoured cars to extricate themselves from bog-downs in the desert. A hospital sheet covered him.

I thought: This is just like my mother.

It took no time to make the identification. The high explosive had incinerated half of Stein's face, leaving the other half more or less undamaged. “Your mate's in for a DSO,” said the clerk, indicating the registry card. “He'll get it too. The board never turns down a PH.”

“PH?”

“Posthumous.” L. offered a smoke when I got back outside. He was telling Rose of Stein's heroism at El Duda. Outside he hailed a cab for us and paid for it; he had an appointment and needed his car. I held out my hand; L. took it.

“I owe you, sir, for far more than your kindness this night. I have served you ill in the field, and for that I am deeply sorry. Please forgive me. From this hour, I shall bend heaven and earth to serve to my fullest capacity.”

The power was off when Rose and I got back to Shepheard's. The fans wouldn't work in our room. We sat on the bed in the dark, smoking and drinking warm champagne from the bottle. Rose had brought Stein's manuscript; I had left it with her for safekeeping. She put it in my rucksack. The typewritten pages were in a velveteen case with the word “Macédoine” in script. A trade-name of porcelain or something.

We stayed up all night. I told Rose everything I could remember of Stein during the fall-back to Cairo. I was not the only one, I said, who thought the world of him. “Do you remember how solid he was in every crisis at Magdalen? That was how he was in the desert. He hadn't changed. I can't tell you how frightening, exhausting and nerve-racking it was out there, and how close we all got to out-and-out breakdown. Stein held the wires together. When he appeared among a circle of officers, you could almost hear the expulsion of breath. Stein's here, we all thought. We'll be all right.”

I told Rose how Stein would sit up patiently teaching young corporals how to call in fire orders, when he himself had gone for nights on only a few hours' sleep. “In the Armoured Division we had our tanks to jump into when the shells started coming in. But Stein with his 25-pounders was out in the open. I asked him one time if he was afraid. ‘Bloody petrified,' he said. ‘But one can't show it, can one?'”

I told Rose that despite all the blood and death of the past thirty days, the experience of war had until now remained unreal to me. “I was just watching it, like a film, or something that was happening to somebody else.”

In the morning Rose and I ordered
croques-madame
on the hotel terrace and chased them down with pots of strong Egyptian coffee. I discovered a boxed scarf in my jacket pocket, a gift for her that I had forgotten. Today was her birthday. She was twenty years old.

“I know you're worried about me, darling,” she said, “and I love you for it. But I'll be all right, I promise, and I'll bring our child safely into this world.”

Rose made it clear that I was never again to speak of sending her home. “I won't go. Don't ask me. I have my job, as you do. Our child will be born here. Maybe that's how it should be.”

Our taxi dropped Rose at Grey Pillars. She had to get in to the code office and I had to go back to camp. Our parting kiss was on the pavement in front of the sandbagged guard post. “I came out here from England for you, my love,” Rose said. “It was a game to me then, too. A romance, a grand adventure. But it has become something other, hasn't it?”

Three weeks later Rose was evacuated with her office to Haifa. Eighth Army's new commanders, Alexander and Montgomery, had now assumed their posts. The line at El Alamein was holding.

Stalemate followed as both sides built up supplies for the inevitable all-out clash. I trained with my formation through the end of August. One morning, just before the turn of the month, I was sent with reports to Saladin's Citadel, the great Arabian Nights complex where the Royal Armoured Corps then had its headquarters. On the stairs I ran into Mike Mallory. He was just returning from the ceremony in which he had received his DSO; he still had the citation box in his hand. Better yet, he said, he had been kicked up to temporary lieutenant-colonel. He was taking over a battalion of the 1st Armoured Division.

“I requested you,” he said, meaning he had put my name in to serve under him at his new posting. “But it seems GHQ has got you down for the Long Range Desert Group.”

“What?”

He shook my hand in congratulation. “Apparently Colonel L. has put in a word for us both. I'm off for ‘the Blue' and you for the bush.”