The Levant Trilogy (34 page)

In the third week of October, the junior
officers, NCOs and men were briefed for battle. Calling his three liaison
officers together, Major Fitzwilliams addressed them in his flat, pleasant
voice: 'We've all known the party was due to begin. It was just a question of
how soon; and with the moon already waning, it had to be damned soon. Well, no
need to tell you, it's any day now. Not tomorrow. I'd say the day after. You
may feel this is short notice, but that's how Monty wants it. So, keep your
traps shut, even among yourselves. There'll be plenty for you to do at the off.
Meanwhile, chaps, carry on.'

Blair remained sunk into silence during the next
two days and Donaldson bustled about as though preparing for action. Simon,
when he sat with Blair, did not attempt to break into his abstraction. In
their different ways, they suffered the tension of waiting. Simon had once led
a platoon into action and experienced again the accumulating apprehension of
the event ahead. But this time he did not expect to face danger, and could
allow himself a self-indulgent excitement.

On the second day, they saw the reconnaissance
parties going out at twilight and Blair whispered to Simon: 'This is it. Their
job is to mark the starting point with tape. Then there'll be the barrage. Then
the infantry go in - poor fuckers!'

'Don't the sappers go first?'

'No. The sappers clear the lanes for the tanks
but the infantry have to take their chance.'

The camp emptied as the different units moved
forward. There was nothing for the liaison officers at that time and they stood
by the command truck like stage hands waiting for the show to commence.
Donaldson, having no opportunity to flaunt his superiority, walked backwards
and forwards, occasionally pausing to kick at the sand with one heel. Fitzwilliams
had given each of them a copy of Montgomery's message to his troops. Simon,
reading by the light of a torch, was moved by the commander's invocation to
'the Lord mighty in battle' and said fervently: 'Wish I was out there with
them.'

Donaldson gave a guffaw of contempt: 'Don't you
know the infantry went forward at daybreak? Been stuck in the slitties all day.
Had to keep their heads down, too; couldn't even come up for a piss. How'd you
like that? Bet you'd soon be pretty sick. What do you think, Blair?' Blair made
no reply to Donaldson's perky show of knowledge but stared before him with a
distracted expression as though stupefied by the onset of action.

At 19.00 hours there had been a special treat
for officers and men; a hot meal of beef and carrots. Blair had not touched it
and when Simon urged him to eat up, he shook his head, 'Don't fancy it,
somehow.'

The moon, the great white Egyptian moon, rising
above the horizon, was sharpening every object into sections of silver or
black. According to rumour the attack would start at 21.00 hours but 21.00
hours came and went and there was nothing but an expectant silence. The men
that remained in the camp had gathered about the command truck, all facing
westwards like sightseers awaiting a firework display.

As the brilliance increased, Simon began to feel
a fearful impatience, certain that the moon would reveal to the enemy the great
concourse of guns and tanks moving towards the tapes. But the night, a windless
and quiet night, remained still and, imagining the Germans asleep, he pitied
their unsuspecting repose.

Donaldson, making approaches to his seniors,
kept looking at his watch and saying knowingly: 'It'll be 22.00 hours, you see
if it isn't,' but he was wrong. The barrage started twenty minutes before the
predicted time.

It opened with so deafening a roar that some of
the men round the truck, a mile or more from the guns, stepped back in trepidation.
The timing had been perfect. Every gun had fired on the instant.

Donaldson giggled: 'Enough to make you wet your
pants. What've they
got
out there, for God's sake?' No one else spoke.
The noise, a supreme awfulness of noise, went on. There was no increase of
volume because there could be no increase: the pitch was at its height from the
start. It shocked the nerves and its effect was made more awesome by the
gun-flashes that stabbed on the horizon, orange and red, an unceasing frenzy of
lights.

Simon turned to Blair and found he was no longer
beside him. He was leaning against the side of the truck, hands over ears,
shoulders raised as though he were being beaten about the head. Simon went to
him: 'You all right, Blair?'

Blair did not reply. Simon, putting a hand on
his shoulder, felt the man's body shaking and left him, unwilling to be a
witness to such terror.

For fifteen minutes the uproar continued without
a pause, then ended as abruptly as it had begun. The sudden silence was as
unnerving as the noise, then came a sense of release. The men began excitedly
to discuss what might happen next but in a moment the guns started up again.

Simon looked at Blair and saw that under this
renewed onslaught, he had sunk down and was now kneeling, head against a truck
wheel, about to collapse altogether. One of Fitzwilliams's messengers was
bending over him and, realizing his condition, returned to the office. The man
reappeared a minute or two later and called Simon in.

Fitzwilliams said: 'I've a job for you,
Boulderstone. I would have sent Blair but seems he's under the weather. Tanks
are due to move in at 02.00 hours when the sappers have cleared the lanes. I
want you to take a signal to CO, Engineers. You'll have to negotiate the mine
field but they'll have gone over the near section by now. No great danger.' He
looked at Simon and as though struck by his youth and inexperience, added:
'Sorry it had to be you. Don't take unnecessary risks. Want you back here in
one piece, old chap.'

The 'old chap' produced in Simon a choking sense
of gratitude. The chance to go forward was enough. He needed no apology. He
said, ' Don't worry about me, sir,' and turning, he made for the jeep at a run.

Crosbie, at the wheel, was awake simply because
no living creature could sleep through the din. Yawning, he asked, 'Where are
we going, sir?'

Simon scarcely knew himself but said, 'We're to
take "boat" track and hope for the best,'

The tracks, each leading to a different sector
of the line, were marked by symbols cut into petrol cans and lit from inside.
That night there were six tracks: boat, bottle, boot and sun, moon, star. When
they came on the first rough portrayal of a boat, Simon shouted,' Get a move
on, Crosbie. It'll be a piece of cake.'

Crosbie, not impressed, grunted and pressed down
on the accelerator. The noise of the barrage, together with incessant flights
of aircraft going in to the attack, created a sort of blanket round the jeep so
that Simon, his senses muffled, imagined they were protected by a cover no
enemy shell could penetrate.

For the first half mile the going was easy; then
they were caught in a dust cloud that choked them and blotted out the 'Boat'
signs. Not knowing whether they were on the track or off it, Crosbie dropped
his pace to a crawl, peering ahead through dust and smoke until he glimpsed the
rear of a stationary vehicle. He braked, jerking them against the glass, and Simon
stood up to shout: 'Hi! Where are we? We're supposed to be on "Boat"
track.'

A voice bawled back: 'You try and find it,
chum.'

Telling Crosbie to stay where he was, Simon
jumped down and felt his way ahead, holding a lighted torch. The light fell on
the sand-blurred outlines of two lorries that had skidded off the track and
tangled together. Other vehicles, trying to drive round them, were bogged down
in soft sand. As he made his way forward, Simon began to smell the acrid smoke
of bursting shells. The shells threw up immense fountains of sand that showered
down on men and trucks. Realizing he was not, after all, immune from danger,
Simon went back for his tin hat. Starting out again, he saw ahead of him a
point of light that grew into a blaze. He was almost upon it before he could
see that a truck had caught fire. Enemy mortars were bursting over it while the
crew was trying to douse the flames with water from a supply tank. As he
stopped, struck by the infernal confusion of the scene, an officer shouted to
him: 'Get out of the way, you jackass. She's loaded with ammunition.'

'I must get through. I've a signal for C O,
Engineers on "Boat" track.'

'Then get past, quick as your feet will carry
you. Keep your head down. If you see a trip wire, give it a wide berth or
you'll get your bollocks blown off.'

Taking this as a joke, Simon asked, 'How far do
the mine fields stretch?'

'How the hell do I know. Probably twenty miles.'

Eyes streaming, throat raw with smoke, Simon
sped round the ammunition truck, making for the noise of the guns. As their
shapes appeared through the fog, he began to stumble on what seemed a stony
beach. Lowering his torch, he saw the mardam was thickly covered with shrapnel
fragments, jagged, blue-grey and crystalline from the super-heat of explosion.
This shrapnel carpet stretched between the guns and many yards beyond them
There was no question of running over it and he picked his way as best he could
until he was out in the open area of no-man's-land. The fog still hung in the
air and even the moon was lost to sight. The mine fields were here. He expected
to find the sappers somewhere ahead, but instead of the sappers, he came upon a
pride of tanks, just visible, monstrous through the smoky dust. Grinding and
rumbling, they were edging forward so slowly, he could pass them at a walk. The
heat of the armour came out to him and he could smell, above the fumes of the
explosive, the stench of exhausts.

Stumbling in the dark, he all but fell in the
path of one of them and someone shouted from above, 'What d'you think you're
doing down there?'

The tank commander was not much older than Simon
and, bending down, his harassed young face lightened as Simon looked up. Seeing
another like himself riding into battle, Simon could have cried in envy but all
he said was,' Sorry. I'm liaison. Had to leave my jeep behind and go it on
foot. I'm trying to find CO, Sappers.'

'He'll be up front, where you might expect. And
if you want to make it, keep clear of our treads. At the rate we're going, it'd
be a slow and sticky finish.'

The rows of widely spaced tanks seemed endless
but at last, dodging among them, almost blinded by the sand they threw up,
Simon was suddenly out in clear air with the moon, tranquil and uninvolved,
high above him. In the distance two searchlights, shifting in the sky, crossed
and remained crossed, at a point a few miles forward. Someone had told him that
their intersection would mark the objective of the advance and he stopped for a
moment to marvel at the sight. Then he started to run with long strides,
enjoying his freedom from vehicles and smoke, supposing the sappers were at
hand. For a brief period he could see the western horizon agitated by flashes
from the anti-tank guns then the dust clouded the air again and he realized
there were men ahead of him, shadows, noiseless because their noise was lost in
the greater noise of exploding shells, a field of ghosts. He had gone too far.
He had reached the rear of the advancing infantry.

Walking two or three yards apart, their rifles
held at the high port, bayonets fixed, the men went at a sort of drawling
trudge under the shower of shells and mortars. They were on the mine fields,
watching for trip wires. Each man had a pack between his shoulder blades and
each pack was painted with a white cross, a marker for the man behind.

As Simon paused, uncertain what to do next, a
man fell nearby and he went to him with some thought of giving help. The man, a
thin, undersized youth, lay on his back and as the eyes gazed blankly at him,
Simon was reminded of the death of Arnold and he wanted to take the body out of
danger. Then he realized he was behaving like a fool. His job was to deliver a
signal, not to get himself killed.

Having crossed the near section of the mine
fields without a sight of the sappers, he was at a loss: where should he go,
left or right? He ran to one of the slow, forward-pacing men and seized hold of
his arm. The man, encapsulated in his own anxiety, gave a cry then stared at
Simon in astonishment. Bending close to him, Simon shouted 'I've a signal for
CO, Engineers. Where can I find them?'

The man twisted away as though from a lunatic
and Simon let him go, then, running across the tide of the advance, came out
into moonlight that whitened vast stretches of empty sand. The barrage had
stopped again and despite the distant thud of guns, the effect was of silence
through which he heard from somewhere far away the high whine of bagpipes. The
music, as fragmentary as the singing of 'Lili Marlene', gradually faded out and
he remembered there was no Scottish regiment in his corps. He knew he was lost.
Having gone so eagerly into the fight, he now only wanted to get back to base.

He waited till the barrage renewed itself then,
guided by the gun flashes, he ran towards the gun emplacements and came upon a
group of men working intently together, lit by the star bursts of enemy shells.
There were three men, one of them holding a long tube to which was fitted a
plate, like a bed-warmer, which he slid over the sand surface. His companions
watched with the tense attention of men to whom death was an immediate
possibility. Simon stopped and stared at the mine-detector plate, fearful of
interrupting the search. The man paused. He had found something. The second man
marked the spot with tape and the third pinned the tape to the ground; then the
three knelt and felt out the shape in the sand with questing fingers, as
delicate as surgeons palpating an abdomen. Simon remained where he was till the
mine was lifted, immobilized and put on one side, then he said, 'Sir!' They
looked up, aware of his presence for the first time.