The Sand Panthers (2 page)

Major von Dodenburg shivered and dug his chin deeper into the collar of his greatcoat. In the weeks to come he would always associate the stink of gasoline on the cold African dawn with the desert.

He turned and stared at the sand waste beyond Tobruk’s perimeter. Behind him Field-Marshal Rommel was hurrying from his command halftrack to his portable thunderbox. As always before a crisis, the Swabian General’s stomach was upset. Two soldiers stood by, shovels over their shoulders, at the ready.

The scene of the night’s attack was strewn with wrecked British equipment: Rifles, machine-guns, bits of paper, uniform, used cartridge cases – and dead men, sprawled in grotesque postures. Further on, the vehicles, which had brought the Toni Commandos to the perimeter wire, were still burning, sending up pails of thick smoke into the overcast dawn sky. Von Dodenburg shivered again. It was a sombre sight.

He adjusted his collar and doubled over to the command halftrack, its many radios already humming and crackling with the business of a new day at war. He snapped smartly to attention in front of the waiting Field-Marshal.
‘Hauptsturmführer von Dodenburg zur Stelle, Herr General-Feldmarschall!’
he reported, staring at the distant horizon behind the Desert Fox’s right shoulder, and realizing to his horror that Sergeant- Major Schulze and his crony Corporal Matz were busily looting from the back of the Field-Marshal’s supply truck the British rations which his own staff had looted from the dead Commandos one hour earlier. ‘That damned Schulze,’ he told himself hotly, ‘I’ll have the nuts off him for this!’ Then he breathed a quick prayer that the two looters would get away with it without being discovered. The SS were not exactly popular with Rommel’s staff as it was.

‘Morning von Dodenburg,’ Rommel said easily, although his broad face was drawn and grey from the new bout of his stomach complaint. He flicked his fly swatter casually to his peaked cap. ‘I suppose you are wondering why I have had you and your armour posted to Africa away from the fleshpots of France?’

‘One doesn’t wonder – at least out loud – about the reasons for a Field-Marshal’s actions, Sir,’ von Dodenburg replied.

Rommel’s tight mouth relaxed mto a little smile. ‘Typical SS, von Dodenburg. You are never ones to be impressed by rank. All right, you saw what happened last night on the perimeter, and the Tommies might have pulled it off – the operation was well planned
for them
– if it had not been for our friends in Alexandria and Cairo.’

‘Friends, sir?’ von Dodenburg ventured and breathed an inner sigh of relief. Schulze, a huge sack of looted British goods over his massive shoulder, was stealing back to the Wotan lines followed by Matz, similarly laden.

‘Yes. The Egyptians are sick of the Tommies. At least the intellectuals and most of the younger officers are. They want to be rid of the English. So far all they have done has been to supply us with information about the movements of the Eighth Army. Hence last night. But now the Delta is almost wide-open for us, they are prepared to go a stage further.’ The Desert Fox sighed like a man who has just too many burdens to bear. ‘However, like our dear Italian allies, the Egyptians are not the bravest of the brave. They need – how shall I put it? – a little backbone.’ The full rage of his frustration broke through and he snorted, ‘Spaghetti-eaters and niggers, what a pathetic bunch of allies we have!’

Von Dodenburg did not rise to the outburst. Beyond the command halftrack the Arab grave-diggers under the command of German NCOs were swarming out into the desert to collect and bury the British dead; the Field-Marshal was always very correct about the dead. After he had photographed them for his scrapbook, he always insisted that they should be buried, whatever the circumstances.

‘Well, von Dodenburg, as I say they need backbone – and now I’m prepared to give them just that.’ He took his fly-swatter and drew a straight line in the sand. ‘The Tommy positions ahead of us to the East, stretching from the Mediterranean to the Qattara Depression. Just as I would do, the Tommy generals have positioned their forces with an unturnable flank to their right – the sea – and another on to their left – the salt sea of the Qattara Depression, which is totally unsuitable for heavy vehicles. Clear, von Dodenburg?’

‘Clear, sir,’ the SS Major answered smartly, the little snake of apprehension already beginning to uncoil itself in his brain.

‘Now those commandos last night came into our positions through the back door into Libya – here.’

Rommel drew a wavy line far below the spot where the Qattara Depression would be. ‘Starting from the Mustafa Barracks in Alexandria, the Tommies drive south west until they reach Ain Dalla Oasis. There, according to our Egyptian informants, the Tommy commandos plunge into the Great Sand Sea.’ He tapped the second line. ‘About here. It is a large sloping wall of sand which runs up a summit of rock. Again according to the niggers, the ascent is not easy, but it can be done, as we saw last night. Once that ascent is taken, there is nearly 800 kilometres of almost uncharted desert to cross. But the Tommies manage to cross it regularly.’

Von Dodenberg intervened – ‘But the Tommies do not use tracked vehicles, Field-Marshal!’ The Desert Fox beamed at him, as if he were a schoolmaster pleased with a particularly bright pupil.
‘Ach, mein lieber von Dodenburg
, you have seen through me?’

‘If you mean, sir, you have a plan to send my Wotan through the desert into Egypt, yes I have. But to what purpose, if I may ask?’

‘Well, von Dodenburg, I have just said that those niggers in the Delta need some backbone before they do anything.’ He licked his cracked lips, and stared directly at von Dodenburg’s pale, hard face. ‘Major, you and your Wotan are going to be the ones who give them that backbone. Now listen…’

‘
Muck ‘em all,

Muck ‘em all, The long and the short and the tall

You’ll get no promotion this side of the ocean

So cheer up my lads, muck’em–’

‘Shut your cakehole, or l’ll have yer on a fizzer, you idle man!’

The raucous North Country voice died immediately at the roar of some angry NCO from within Alexandria’s gleaming white Mustafa Barracks. At the gate the skinny little Arab with a bold hook of a nose jumped visibly and clutched at his skinny-ribbed donkey’s rein.

The regimental policeman – all gleaming brass, brilliant white-blancoed equipment, sparkling boots and crisp starched khaki – raised his swagger cane and snarled out of the side of his mouth. ‘Sod off you dirty Gippo wog – and get that poxy nag out of here before he pisses in front of the guardroom!’ The little Egyptian peddlar was unafraid. Indeed he moved closer to this lance-corporal on guard and held up the pictures he had concealed in his skinny brown claw.

The sentry gasped and took in the first picture: dark skinned, middle-aged woman with a twenties hairdo doing something he had thought impossible with a yellow-toothed donkey. ‘You dirty Gippo-wog bugger!’ he exclaimed, not taking his eyes off the photos. ‘That’s all you filthy lot think on – dipping yer wick and half inching our rations.’ He waved his swagger cane at the grinning peddlar, his face crimson with righteous indignation. ‘Now be off with you, or I’ll have you inside the nick in double-quick time!’

The Egyptian shot a furtive look to both sides. Urgently he whispered out of the corner of his mouth in perfect Upper Class English. ‘That’s exactly what I want you to do, Corporal.’ The MP’s mouth dropped open stupidly. ‘What did you say?’

‘You heard me, man! Get me inside and make it look as if you are arresting me for loitering. I must see Brigadier Young at once – and they have spies everywhere. Now move!’

The sentry moved! Next instant a wailing, protesting peddlar was dragged into the barracks by the scruff of his skinny neck, leaving his loudly braying donkey behind him. Major Slaughter had done it again.

* * *

‘Well, Slaughter?’ Brigadier Young barked. Above him the mechanical fan barely stirred the stiflingly hot air.

‘A total failure,’ Slaughter answered, removing his disguise. ‘The Jerries knew Haselden was coming. They wiped the floor with our poor chaps. I doubt if we’ll get a dozen of them back through the Sand Sea in the end.’

‘Treachery?’ Young, a white-haired, red-faced officer with a trim Regular Army moustache queried.

Slaughter nodded slowly.

‘By whom – our people?’ the Brigadier rapped, leaning forward in anticipation.

Slaughter took his time. Outside a harsh military voice was barking:
‘Now swing them arms there! ... Bags of swank! … and open them legs, you bunch of pregnant penguins – nothing will fall out, you know!’
‘No sir. It was the Gippos. That crowd around Nasser and the rest of those young Gippo officers. They’ll go to any length to get us out of Egypt.’ Young bit his bottom lip.

‘They’ve got their eyes and ears everywhere. When our chaps from the SAS or the LRDG
1
prepare to move out into the blue, there are Gippo mess waiters, the sanitary wallahs, the Gippo hawkers, all taking note of our every move and passing it on to the Nasser crowd.’

‘It’s damnable!’ Brigadier Young exploded, his face flushing angrily. ‘Why the devil don’t we sling the whole greasy bunch of them inside, once and for all? Skulking around here in the base area and betraying all those good men up there in the desert.’

Slaughter shook his head slowly. ‘Afraid no-can-do, sir. Then we’d really set the cat among the pigeons. Even the Fat Boy’ – he meant the grossly overweight Egyptian king – ‘would have to forget about his whores and come out on the side of the young officers. We’d have the whole of the Delta up in arms and at the moment with this new chap General Montgomery preparing a fresh offensive up the blue, we can’t afford that kind of thing, sir.’

Young sighed and looked up at the flaking white ceiling, as if seeking solace up there. ‘I suppose you’re right, Slaughter. You always are.’

‘Mostly, sir,’ Slaughter replied without a trace of irony. For eighteen years he had been in the political intelligence section of the Cairo High Commissioner’s office and he had lost his English sense of humour – if he had ever possessed one. In nearly two decade in Egypt, mixing with the Egyptians and the desert Arabs for months on end without ever speaking to another Englishman, he had adopted many Egyptian mannerisms, including taking everything completely seriously. ‘Once we have beaten the Hun in the desert and the Delta is no longer threatened, then the High Commissioner will act. He’ll put the lot of them behind bars where they belong. But at the moment, everything is on a knife edge. Only last week, the Fat Boy had the audacity to tell Lampson
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“When the war’s over, then for God’s sake put down the white man’s burden – and go”.’

‘I understand, Slaughter. All right, what can we do? I presume you are here for a reason.’

‘I am, sir.’ Slaughter hesitated a fraction of a second, as if he were finding it a little difficult to formulate what he had to say next. ‘Assuming, sir, that the situation in the Delta is on a knife edge, with Gippos ready to have a crack, at us any day now, what do you think it would take for them to make a move?’

Young laughed coarsely. ‘A bloody miracle, Slaughter!’ he exclaimed. ‘You know better than I do what a bunch of cowards they are. When your back’s turned, all right, they might risk sticking a knife in it, but if you turn and face them–’ he shrugged. ‘They’re off with their tails between their skinny legs.’

‘Agreed, sir. But in this case I think we’ve got our backs to them. The troops are pretty thin on the ground down here with Montgomery preparing for his offensive in the desert, and – with all respect – I don’t think the staff wallahs at GHQ, Cairo would frighten them if it came to trouble.

‘Now, sir,’ Slaughter went on, ‘what if the Gippos receive a stiffening of Germans?’

‘Huns? But who and how?’

‘I don’t know about the “who” sir, but the “how” is not too difficult.
Through the Sand Sea!’

Young looked at him aghast. ‘But they’ve never tried it before,’ he stuttered. ‘I mean…’

Slaughter looked at him coldly. ‘I’ve good reason to believe that Rommel is planning something of that sort, sir.’

‘How do you mean, Slaughter?’

The English agent lowered his brown eyes almost demurely. ‘My boys, of course, sir.’

‘Of course,’ Young echoed, grateful to Slaughter that he did not have to look him in the eye at that particular moment. The Major had been in Egypt too long. He had taken up too many of the Wog vices, including that one. ‘But if your boys are correct in their estimate, what can we do? All I could give you to cover the exits from the Sand Sea is what is left of the SAS and LRDG.’ He shrugged. ‘Perhaps a couple of score men at the most.’

‘I’ll take them, sir – with thanks,’ Slaughter said hastily. ‘But I want more – I want the Horsemen of St George, lots of them.’

‘Horsemen of St George?’ the Brigadier queried. Slaughter laughed coldly. ‘That is what the desert Arabs call golden sovereigns. Sir, I want to call out the tribes. For every German they capture, I’ll promise them twenty Horsemen. It’s a small fortune for them.’