How I Won the War Read online

  “Why you be like that? Don’t you wanna good time? If you send my girls away, you know what they do?”

  “I am not in the least concerned …”

  “If you send them back they go and tell Germans just where you are. Then they bring guns and blow you all to hell.”

  “Oh … I see….” That was more than I could risk. And a plan was brewing in my mind which required peace till nightfall. “Then they will have to remain on the island. But in purdah…. Sergeant Transom … construct a Ladies Only enclosure with grain bags against the end wall…. Everyone back to his post!”

  When the harem was marked off by a wall of sacks, I herded the protesting females inside. I made a chalk sign with “Out of Bounds to British Troops” on one side and “No Females Past This Point” on the other. I placed Private Clapper on guard at the entrance, feeling that his continued concern for Mrs. Clapper’s fidelity might make him a trustworthy eunuch.

  “Is not right,” wailed Madame Rosabella. “We come long way to give first English plenty good time.”

  “Is not right, three ruddy bags full,” said Private Drogue. “For all the under we ever get we might as well be in the Salvation Army. Look at that biddy in the blue sweater. I could lose me way in her lot.”

  I called together my order group.

  “Since we have penetrated into the heart of the enemy’s camp,” I said, “it is our duty to exploit our success. As the general emphasized, we must keep at the enemy like a terrier after a rat. Also with the arrival of these fallen women it is advisable that we leave the island before they upset the rank and file.”

  “Never mind the rank and file,” muttered Corporal Dooley. “There’s meself encumbered with two-bobs’-worth of Blackpool rock.”

  “The crucial battle for Tunis is being fought to the south. A surprise attack on the Boche headquarters at this crucial moment would have a devastating effect. Henri can lead us to the building. We will therefore open the bridge at first dark and make a lightning raid on General von Arnim’s headquarters.”

  There was a silence. They were clearly stunned by the brilliance of my plan.

  “Do you mean, sir,” said Sergeant Transom, “that we should go swanning down Tunis High Street in British trucks and have it out with General von Arnim personally with just one platoon?”

  “Speed, Sergeant, is an essential element of surprise.” He turned to Henri.

  “How far away is the Boche headquarters?”

  “About two—three miles.”

  “And how far d’you reckon we’d get?”

  “Maybe half mile, if we have luck. Then just guns, tanks and roadblocks all the way. You ain’t just brave man, Lieutenant. You maybe crazy.”

  “We don’t want to be no Charge of the Light Bridge, sir,” said Corporal Hink. “I don’t care if nobody never writes no poetry about me.”

  “I ain’t after the V. C., sir,” said Corporal Globe. “Specially not posthumously.”

  “You’ll be needing, of course, sir,” said Corporal Dooley, “the senior corporal to stay behind and look after the billets.”

  I stressed to them again the vital military advantage of surprise and while I was talking I noticed the attention of my order group wandering continually towards the Ladies’ Enclosure, where three of the most nubile occupants were belly dancing to “Ramona” on the gramophone. I detected then, of course, that their objections to my plan of attack were founded not on valid tactical considerations, but on simple lechery. They were merely being obstructive because they wished to stay on the island with the loose women. This strengthened my determination to carry through my plan and I gave orders then and there for a departure rehearsal.

  “We must first lay on a drill for opening the bridge. Get the winding handle, Corporal Hink.”

  “I can’t, sir. It’s gone.”

  The peg on the wall was empty. Private Drogue spoke up from his post near by.

  “I think it was one of them women nicked it while you were talking, sir. It might have been that bride in the blue sweater with top-heavy torso.” He growled like a frustrated gorilla. “Shall I search her for you, sir?”

  There was a sudden splash in the water outside.

  “That’s it, sir,” shouted Private Spool from the gallery. “That’s the handle gone in the drink. Looked like a tart slinging it, too.”

  “Well,” said Sergeant Transom, beaming happily. “We can’t get the bridge over now. So we can’t go hell-for-leather after von Arnim, can we?”

  “We will proceed on foot,” I said decisively. “That way we can avoid all roadblocks. And we will cross over in the prostitutes’ punts.”

  I went to the powder-room and told Madame Rosabella that I held her responsible for the loss of the winding handle. If the culprit was not produced, she herself would be tried by drumhead court-martial for obstructing an officer of the British Army in the due performance of his duty.

  “But why you so mean-hearted?” she demanded. “Why you want to take English boys away from here? Plenty food, plenty drink, plenty good time for everybody. You don’t find no better girls down there in Tunis. Why you so spiteful to me?”

  I went out with Sergeant Transom through the wicket door. The corporals were out there already. Dooley was kneeling on the edge and thrashing the water with a plank.

  “If only we’d been a minute earlier, sir,” he panted, “we’d have cotched them at it. It was the women that cut them loose and we just saw the skirts of them go flickering round the corner.”

  The four boats were drifting fifty yards off and making all speed away from the mainland.

  “This is deliberate sabotage,” I snapped. “Men have faced the firing squad for less.”

  I marched straight back into the shed and put Madame Rosabella under close arrest. Corporal Dooley suggested I should have all the women searched for scissors, but I deemed it unwise to allow any opportunity for incidental lechery.

  “No bridge, no boats, sir,” said Sergeant Transom cheerfully. “Looks like we’re here for the night.”

  “We can swim across.”

  “Half of them are non-swimmers.”

  “Then half can swim and half can come across on a line.”

  “What about the guns? And our clothes. We going to attack General von Arnim mother-naked?”

  “Our clothes can be towed over in a truck canopy. There’s a way of making it waterproof. I have the plan in my O. C. T. U. notes on River Crossings.”

  “If you make English boys take off their clothes for swim,” screamed the furious Rosabella, “I tell my girls throw all clothes in the river.”

  “If any of the lads take their trousers off, sir,” said Corporal Hink, “them floozies’ll go raving mad.”

  “Disrobing may not be necessary,” I said. “The water may be shallow enough to wade through. I will make a reconnaissance. If it is wadeable I will take a line across myself.”

  It was just falling first dark as I took off my jacket, shoes and socks, rolled up my trouser legs and lowered my foot down the side of that wharf and into the thick water. I would have taken off my trousers, but for all those women in the shed. Not, mark you, that in my case Corporal Hink’s remark was in any way applicable. I am not, thank God and a Methodist upbringing, that sort of chap. I had the line tied to my belt to leave my hands free…. I stretched my leg deeper and deeper, feeling for the bottom, and rolled my body as far as I could towards the edge …

  For lack of eyewitness evidence to that effect, I will not formally say that someone pushed me—after all I was surrounded by my own trusted N. C. O.’s and Sergeant Transom himself was holding the line. Whether I felt a toe prise my buttock or whether I rolled over a stone on the wharf I do not know, but I suddenly found myself falling over the edge and floundering in the water…. I sank deep into the oily depths but never touched bottom … treading water against the drag of my clothing … dog-paddling with an overhead action, I fought my way gasping to the surface and turned on my back. />
  “Hold on, sir,” shouted Sergeant Transom, “I’ll soon lug you in.”

  In retrospect, I take pride that even at this sudden turn of events I kept my head. Military training stood by me and I made a quick adjustment to my original wading plan.

  “Pay out the rope,” I cried, “I will swim across now and establish a line for the non-swimmers.”

  I struck out with my powerful side-trudgeon and bore steadily across the gap. When I had made ten yards from the island the doors of the shed slid open and Madame Rosabella and her troop of harpies came screeching out.

  “Stop!” they cried in various tongues. “Come back! Do not steal the English boys…. Traitor! Saboteur! Vile enemy of hard-working girls!”

  They hurled at me bottles, driftwood, and old shoes, and as I turned on my back to reason with them, the barrel-chested blueshirt who had taken Drogue’s fancy heaved up a bag of grain and hurled it over the water.

  “Ladies!” I said. “Ladies! Desist!”

  The sky was blacked out by the bottom of a grain bag … it landed squarely on my face and I went down into dark-green oblivion with canal juice gurgling acrid in my lungs.

  I recovered consciousness three hours later, warm and drowsy, with hot air blowing across my flattened face. A petrol cooker was roaring, candles flickering and my clothes were hanging on a line. I was lying under blankets on a bed of sacks and Madame Rosabella was smoothing my brow.

  “He’s all right,” said Sergeant Transom. “Here you are, sir. Drink this.”

  Dazed and half-awake, I drank from the glass and some electric liquid coursed vividly down my throat.

  “What is it?” I asked.

  “Brandy. Medicinal brandy, of course. It’s what the doc would give you if he was here. Have some more.”

  It certainly made me feel better, so I drained the rest of the glassful and found myself sinking comfortably back to sleep. That grain bag must have hit me pretty hard because my memories of that night have always been very disjointed. I remember waking up a couple of times to hear soft music playing, bottles clinking, and rosy figures dancing a Greek bacchanal. Once I thought I saw Private Drogue losing his way in the lot of his female shot-putter. I couldn’t be sure it was Drogue, however, because his face was buried in the vast white billows of her bosom which, with the massage of a masterbaker, he was kneading up over his ears.

  When I woke in daylight, my head was beating bass drums and my mouth was like the bottom of a bird cage. The girls and all their trappings were gone.

  “Henri found us a boat and I got rid of them at first light,” said Sergeant Transom. “After what they done to you, sir, the boys didn’t want them hanging round here no more. There’s been a hell of a barney down in the town and I reckon the Jerries have packed in. Henri’s gone down to check up and see if he can hear anything about the Musketeers.”

  “Good,” I said. “Then we must get moving on to the mainland right away.”

  “Afraid we can’t, sir. You remember one of them tarts slung the bridge handle in the drink? We’ve tried all ways to work the wheel, but it won’t move without it.”

  “Then we must find the handle.”

  “What, down there?” He pointed into the sludge water. “We don’t even know where to start looking.”

  “A little logical thought will narrow down the area of search. We know approximately where Private Spool saw the woman when she threw the handle. We can estimate the distance that an average woman could throw an object of that weight. If we then methodically search in that radius we should locate the handle.”

  “But supposing it was that biddy who copped you with the sack. If she tossed it, that handle could be anywhere between here and Tunis Town Hall.”

  In spite of the anvils clanging behind my eyes I made the necessary calculations, paraded the eighteen swimmers in the party, stripped to their underpants, and led them into the water. Unfortunately all my N. C. O.’s turned out to be non-swimmers, and I had to paddle around the critical semi-circle myself and ensure that each man was stationed correctly.

  “Now,” I cried, when I had all eighteen treading water in the proper area. “On the command ‘Dive,’ each man will descend to the bottom, search in a six-foot circle and return to the surface. We will then close in the arc to one yard nearer the island and repeat the drill until the handle is found…. Ready, men? Prepare to dive!”

  A motor horn blasted from the mainland.

  “What in God’s name are you doing in there, Goodbody?” yelled Major Arkdust. “Holding a blasted swimming gala?”

  “We’re the Luton Ladies’ Formation Team,” said my batman, Private Gripweed. “Imitating bloody water lilies.”

  “No, sir,” I cried. “We are taking steps to open this swingbridge so that we may leave the island. I have pleasure to report, sir, that the Musketeers were first into Tunis. Primus in Tunis, sir, as one might say. We got here at 16.29 hours yesterday.

  By treading water at double-time—an aquatic trick I had learnt in the Kettering Municipal Swimming Baths and Washhouse—I kept myself waist-high out of the water and held my right hand, from the words “Primus in Tunis,” rigidly at the salute.

  “If you got this far at four o’clock, why the hell are you still on that island?”

  “We were besieged, sir, all night.”

  “Who by?”

  “Women, sir.”

  “By women?”

  “Yes, sir. Loose women, sir, as a matter of fact. Fancy ladies, if you know what I mean. They wanted to keep us here for business purposes. They cut the boats adrift and threw the bridge winding handle in the water. We are now searching systematically for that handle …”

  Henri was talking excitedly to my commander and pointing across the bridge.

  “What’s that sticking out of the side of the wheelhouse?” yelled Major Arkdust. “He says that’s the blasted handle.”

  I looked where he bade me. The handle, polished and bone dry was in place and ready for winding. Someone had put it back while I was arranging my frogmen.

  There was only one course open to me. I stopped my doublequick paddling, set my legs rigidly together and, still at the salute, allowed myself to descend slowly into the concealing depths of the bottle-green sea. As I went down like a captain without a bridge I saw Sergeant Transom backing Privates Drogue and Spool up against the wheelhouse and thrashing them about their heads with my K. D. trousers.

  Chapter Ten

  Commanders in all grades must have qualities of leadership; they must have initiative; they must have the “drive” to get things done…. Above all, they must have that moral courage, that resolution, and that determination which will enable them to stand firm when the issue hangs in the balance. Probably one of the greatest assets a commander can have is the ability to radiate confidence in the plan and operations even (perhaps especially) when inwardly he is not too sure about the outcome … you must watch your own morale carefully … if your heart begins to fail you when the issue hangs in the balance, your opponent will probably win …

  F.-M. VISCOUNT MONTGOMERY OF ALAMEIN Memoirs

  AFTER I HAD TAKEN Tunis, the regiment settled down at Kalougie to rest and refit. Encamped in an olive grove above a sapphire bay, we could have seen out the war from that site. We were regarded as God’s gift by the local Chamber of Trade and hordes of Arabs descended upon us daily selling fish, fruit, eggs, and young women. To protect ourselves from our commercial allies we had to post more sentries and fix more barbed wire than had served to keep us safe from the Germans.

  Captain Tablet called me to him one day in July 1943.

  “I have a special job for you, Goodbody. The All-Highest have decided, at last, that our daily invasion of Wogs must be brought under hygienic control. Each unit is to appoint a Civil Liaison Officer to carry out this function. With your company commander’s approval, you have been selected as C. L. O. of this camp. Full details of your duties are contained in this folder. Briefly, you must form a nominal
roll of security-cleared and medically accepted Arabs and control the issue of passes so that only forty per day are allowed entry to the camp. You are authorized to appoint your own interpreter at Class IV rate of pay and a jeep will be provided by the M. T. O. for your use during the first fortnight.”

  I was most gratified at this mark of the adjutant’s confidence in me. I had been worried that he might still be bearing malice from the Juniper court-martial.

  “You may rely, sir, that I will control these civilians to the utmost of my ability. After all,” I chuckled jocularly, “I was a civilian myself once.”

  “A fact,” he said thinly, “which you give the Army little opportunity to forget.”

  I was almost out of the tent when he called me back.

  “Just a moment, Goodbody. There is something else for the C. L. O.”

  I returned to attention before his desk. He opened a file and smiled blissfully at its contents.

  “This is a special instruction on medical clearance. They are particularly worried at Army level about the outbreaks of dysentery and believe that they are spread by Arab carriers. No pass may be issued to a trader until he had been cleared of this suspicion by analysis of a sample of his excrement.”

  He placed on the desk a small cylindrical tin and beamed at it in vast content.

  “I recall from your lectures on porcyliocosis how knowledgeable you are in medical matters and know that you will enjoy persuading each of our one hundred and fifty Wog friends to fill one of these charming little tins with his personal contribution, so that you may attach a form MDS 7004 in quadruplicate stating the name, age, address, and occupation of the donor Part I and your certification at Part II that you verified by personal inquiry that the sample did issue only from the above mentioned.”

  “You mean, sir,” I said, “that I’ve got to ask each of those Arabs for a tinful of … a tinful of …”

  “Exactly, my dear chap. And a very sanitary service you will be doing us all.”

  I went down into Kalougie and fixed myself up with an interpreter, Class IV. His name was Bubilya and he had learnt his Class IV English on an American tanker. He had one eye and wore a yellow baseball sweater and a pair of postman’s trousers. I gave him as badge of office a steel helmet with C. L. O. (Int.) painted on it. When I unpacked the crate of tins and explained to him our first assignment, he asked for a week’s money in advance.