Take or Destroy! (25 page)

‘That’s a landing craft!’ he snapped. ‘It’s not
Umberto!
’ He snatched at the telephone. ‘Searchlights!’ he yelled.

‘For God’s sake,’ Hochstatter said.
‘Umberto’s
full of ammunition and the RAF’s still overhead!’

‘I’ll take responsibility,’ von Steen said. ‘If we don’t hit her now, we certainly shan’t be able to if she gets alongside!’

As the searchlight near the Mantazeh Palace picked them up, they all instinctively ducked.

Babington lowered his glasses. ‘Here we go,’ he said.

‘Dead slow ahead,’ Hardness ordered. ‘Port five, cox’n.’

‘Port five, sir.’

‘Hoist the battle ensign, Number One. Stand by all guns.’

As the great white jack fluttered from the masthead the crates on
Umberto’
s deck flattened and the sides were tossed overboard.

‘Hit that searchlight, Guns.’

The time was 2347.

Tanks were put ashore and the mole and adjoining buildings quickly occupied.

Umberto’s
first shot hit the end of the mole near where Private Jumpke was standing, and the ear-splitting crash and sear of flame nearly made him leap out of his skin. Yelling with fright, he was knocked sideways against the wall and dropped to the bottom of his post while the chunks of concrete flew through the air. A second shell sailed over his head to land in the town where it wrecked a house, and killed three people, a donkey and two camels. The third hit the Mantazeh Palace searchlight. As it went out, a boot with a foot in it and a helmet with a head in it sailed out in a long slow curve and plopped into the sea, as though they had been hurled at the attackers by someone who had put his hand on the first thing that came within reach.

Those three shells were to have quite a considerable effect on Private Bontempelli’s behaviour during the rest of the night.

Just before the attack had started, he had managed to slip away from the company latrines and between the gun crews’ huts at Mas el Bub, and had sidled in the darkness along the sea front towards the seaward side of the Borgo Nero, where he had waited until the coast was clear enough for him to dive into the narrow alleys behind the mosque.

The Borgo Nero was very familiar to Bontempelli. It was a squalid area full of ravenous flies and the inane sound of Arab music, where once a week a patrol entered with great deliberation to buy
eggis,
the midget-sized products of Arab hens, for the officers’ mess. Most of the garrison thought it necessary to learn to walk backwards before you entered the Borgo Nero because it was well known that the Arabs hated them all, but with Bontempelli it was different. Uneducated, unskilled, and to a certain extent unemployable, he had the gift of communication, and could move confidently among the shuffling men and veiled women. Indifferent to standing orders which placed the area out of bounds, he had never made the slightest concession to racialism but could still get the Egyptians whom he met in there hooting with laughter at his imitations of Sottotenente Baldissera and Unteroffizier Upholz.

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
Umberto
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.