How I Won the War Page 9

  And with a gesture of an impresario, he pointed at me.

  “You’re dead right, Sergeant,” said Corporal Hink admiringly. “Just look at them noble, hawklike features. Spitting image of an Arab sheikh with anaemia.”

  “And that carriage!” said Corporal Globe. “Just a pale-faced son of the desert. A bit of brown boot polish over your gob, sir, and you could have just stepped off a camel.”

  “If Mrs. Lawrence ever see you sudden, sir, she’d reckon it was her own boy come back,” said Corporal Dooley. “When you get sunburned there’s going to be Bedouin bints from all over Arabia coming after you. No doubt about it, sir, you’re the dead ringer for the job.”

  I must confess that I had cast myself in this particular operation as planner rather than executant, bearing in mind that my training and experience would be of more value to the war effort in interpreting the information than in obtaining it. However, now that I looked around my subordinates I could see that it would be difficult to make any of them into convincing Arabs. And since they drew attention to my resemblance to Lawrence of Arabia—I feel this was as much in reference to my qualities of leadership as it was to any mere physical similarity—and I had suggested the daylight idea, there was nothing else I could do but carry it out myself.

  The following night I was fitted out in burnous and headdress, face and hands done brown with an infusion of cigarettes in tea, and equipped with an authentic North African stone-cultivating shovel.

  “Anywhere from ten yards up you’d pass for a Wog wonderful, sir,” said Sergeant Transom. “You’ll be all right for Jerry but what’ll you do if you meet some other Wogs down in the wadis and they want to pass the time of day?”

  “I will make out I’m deaf and dumb. That’s what spies always do.”

  “And have you got that phosphorus bomb?”

  “In my burnous pocket.”

  “Good. Any trouble, you toss that and we’ll start piling down the smoke. And don’t try getting too close. Remember what happened to Lawrence of Arabia when he tried this gimmick on the Turks.”

  I went down with a patrol two hours before dawn and hid up in the wadis. Tunisians are not, unfortunately, early risers and I had to wait till nine o’clock in the morning before making a move. I was out of view of Djebel Aboudir, screened by a precipitous bluff which bulged out at its foot, but I took the precaution of stopping every ten yards or so to dig a few innocent stones. Steadily, industriously, I worked my way along the sheltered flank of the bluff to its extremity, around which I would leave its cover and come into full view on the open plain. The last twenty yards ran through a rock-strewn gully backed by caves running under the bluff. I scrambled round a boulder as big as a bus and stopped dead in my nightgown as an Arab came round the corner ahead!

  He stopped and looked at me. I applied my shovel to the ground vigorously. It was solid rock around me and the blade skated harmlessly back and forth with the sound of a cast iron zither. The Arab lowered his spade and cultivated stones at his own feet. He was luckier than I; he struck gravel.

  We worked away for a minute or two and I watched him carefully out of the corner of my eye. He was a small, thin Wog and I calculated I could handle him if it came to fisticuffs. I moved a little closer till we were under ten yards apart and I had a patch of diggable scree to work on. He stopped shovelling and looked at me. Then he grinned, nodded his head happily and spread his arms in friendship. He waited with ear cocked for me to speak.

  It was a good job I had thought the thing through to my deaf-and-dumb act. I placed the tips of my fingers on my lips, shook my head in hopeless negative and fanned my palms before my face like an umpire signalling a washout. I made the motions three times, then transferred to my ears and repeated the triple pantomime. In final emphasis I stood motionless, my spade at ease, and opened and closed my mouth soundlessly in the fashion of a fish mimic.

  The Arab was at first taken aback by my actions, and obvious alarm spread across his Semitic features. Then he got my message, his grin returned and he nodded understandingly. To my amazement he put his shovel to the ground and gave a repeat performance of my own mouth, ears, and goldfish charade. At the end of his act he pointed vigorously at me and then back at himself and I took his meaning…. He was deaf and dumb, too!

  Accustomed as I am to find that anyone of whom I ask the way turns out to be stone-deaf or a stranger in the place, I must admit to being utterly surprised that on the only occasion I ever impersonated a dumb soundproof Arab in the interests of His Majesty’s Government, the first person I met under Djebel Aboudir turned out to be a Tunisian deaf-mute.

  I returned to digging, to give myself time to think out my next move, and he did the same. His blade momentarily jammed against some obstinate strata, he slipped in effort and fell on his side. Quickly, he regained his feet, grinning reassurance…. I froze suddenly in mid-swing…. As his robe swung up in the tumble, a foot had shown clear of the skirt … and it was wearing a German field boot!

  He was a Boche in disguise, bent on the same errand as myself … that’s why he’d used my deaf-and-dumb routine…. He couldn’t speak Arabic either…. I kept the shovel going with my left hand while I moved my right stealthily under my gown and drew my revolver…. I dropped the shovel and turned to face him.

  “Hände hoch!” I snapped in all the German I could muster. “Ich habe sie covered from beneath my burnous.”

  He spun round like a duellist and dropped into a fighting crouch.

  “Hände hoch!” I repeated, bringing my pistol into view. “Du bist mein prisoner.”

  Feverishly, as fast as his hands could flicker, he went through my speak-no-evil, hear-no-evil gestures … keeping up the bluff to the end…. His right hand came out of pantomime and down to his waist … he was reaching for his Luger, but it was under the robe.

  “Keep die Hände out of your burnous. Oder ich shoot to kill.”

  He was the first German I had ever met in personal combat, face to face. It always goes against the grain for a Britisher to shoot even a Boche in cold blood and it becomes doubly difficult when he’s got himself done up like a damned chocolate-coloured cocoon. But total war is a brutal affair … it was his life or mine. I shoved my trusty Smith and Wesson farther forward lest it kick back at me and steeled myself to shoot him down like a dog…. There was a flutter of white behind him and two Arabs came creeping out of a cave in the bluff…. From their postures they were clearly bent on attacking the German from behind…. Doubtless, I reasoned, gallant, pro-British Arabs ever-faithful to the Raj…. I only had to keep his attention my way and I would have him without bloodshed … a dead prisoner can only be identified, a live one can be interrogated.

  “Ich gebe sie ein last chance,” I said. “Kamerad! Oder du bist ein dead man.”

  His field boots scrabbled on the rocks as he turned to run back round the bluff … but the Arabs leapt on him from either side and laid him senseless with a swat from a leather cosh.

  “Well done, O faithful Bedouin,” I cried and was just going forward to shake their hands when I smelt two more of them close behind me … as I turned my head in welcome, someone hit it with a sandbag … the scree leapt up to meet me and I went down among silent fireworks into final darkness.

  When I awoke I was lying on my back and deep red light was streaming in through a Gothic window. For a moment, in my white draperies, I wondered if I had gone to Heaven. But then, as I raised my head, dull pain spread from the new bump at the back and I saw that I was looking out through the mouth of a cave to the sun going down behind the hills. I tried to get up but I was tied hand and foot. The weight of my belt and revolver was gone from my waist.

  The German lay at the back of the cave, hog-tied as I was and still unconscious. There were no Arab brigands in the cave nor, as far as I could see, any outside. In spite of my headache I made a quick appreciation of my military situation…. All was not lost. If I could get loose before the German awoke or the Arabs returned, there was
still a chance of ultimate victory. I might not have had sight of Djebel Aboudir, but I would have a ready-bound prisoner to take in for interrogation.

  First I had to get my hands free. I looked carefully around for any of the traditional devices. It was an exceptionally bare cave and the Lone Ranger would have been hard up for a bond-loosener. There were no fire embers to char with, no broken bottles to chafe against, no faithful dog with intelligent teeth, and every rock I rubbed my rope on crumbled always as I grated. I twisted and writhed in the dust but my knots had been tied with Arabian cunning and I could make no slack anywhere. I blew myself up and let myself down as I had read in a book about Houdini but succeeded only in raising a raw patch under my neck halter.

  After twenty minutes private wrestling my burnous was soaked in sweat and, if anything, my bonds felt tighter. I was getting nowhere inside the cave and decided to look for a knot-pick outside. I rolled myself over and over to the entrance and the phosphorus bomb came out of my pocket as a spear-headed rock ground chips off my hips. I was all set to cast myself vertically over the lip and down into the wadi when I caught in the failing light a glimpse of white robe flickering among the rocks…. It was the Arabs coming back…. There were four of them and it looked as though the Goodbody story was coming to a close…. I resolved to sell myself dearly and managed to work my feet round the bomb. I was engaged in trying to lever myself in the manner of a mangonel when the enemy came stalking up to the bluff and into my full view…. There was something peculiar about them…. They were a very strangely assorted quartet of Wogs … their leader stiff as a ramrod in his flapping gown, the second the size of the French second row and bursting his burnous at the seams, the third with yellow hair bushing out of his hood and the fourth wearing horn-rimmed glasses…. My faithful N.C.O.’s had come en masse to find their lost commander!

  “It’ll be in one of these caves for sure,” said the voice of Corporal Dooley.

  “Or maybe buried under one of them piles of rocks,” said Corporal Hink.

  “More likely in some sort of grave,” said Corporal Globe.

  They thought I was dead and buried. And they even risked their lives to find my body. While careful, of course, to avoid undue familiarity I had throughout my Army career tried to be as democratic to my N.C.O.’s as my superior rank would permit, but I had not realized till then what depths of loyalty my efforts had tapped.

  “I’m all right, chaps,” I cried. “I’m over here in a cave.”

  “Oh! Good Gawd, no!” said Corporal Globe. “Not him!”

  The poor chap thought he was hearing a ghost. I had many a good joke with him about it afterwards.

  “I’m alive and kicking,” I said. “But tied up. Rally on me! Quickly!”

  They scrambled up into the cave and Sergeant Transom cut me loose.

  “Thanks a lot, chaps,” I said. “I’m deeply touched by your devotion…. But no time for talk, I’m afraid. We’ve got to get moving. The Arabs or a Boche patrol might be here at any moment.”

  “Who’s that tied up over there?” asked the sergeant.

  “That’s my prisoner. He’s a Boche masquerading as a Wog, just like I was. But I penetrated his disguise and he’d have been back in our lines already if those Arab brigands hadn’t jumped me. But we’ll take him up now. We’ll have to carry him because he’s still flat out.”

  “Right. Get him up, you three,” said Sergeant Transom.

  “But, Sarge,” said Corporal Dooley. “What about the stuff? Ain’t we going to …”

  “Now we found the governor? Use your loaf, Dooley, and get that Jerry up on your shoulders.”

  Darkness came down as I led my non-commissioned cortège back through the wadis towards our lines. The corporals, two at the head and one at the heels, bore my captive up the broken slope of Djebel Tokurna, cursing their awkward burden in unison as they stumbled and stubbed their way among the uncertain rocks.

  “How did you find out what happened to me?” I asked Sergeant Transom.

  “There was a Wog kid saw them cop you. He came up and told us. We asked around and found there used to be a Wog cemetery for some peculiar sect down there. They were buried in the caves with all their worldly wealth in the coffins. The locals reckon a leading gang of grave robbers have buried a big cache of jewellery somewhere in the wadis.”

  “And the Arabs that attacked me thought I was after it.”

  “That’s about it. But they were scared of cutting your throat when they found you were a British officer.”

  The stretcher party veered towards platoon headquarters as we came safely over the hill and down the reverse slope.

  “Keep going, chaps,” I said. “Straight back to Company headquarters. This may just be the identification they’re waiting for back in Algiers. He may even be a high-ranking intelligence officer.”

  “His bloody brains weigh heavy if he is,” said Corporal Hink. “I’m sweating cobblestones under this flannel nightshirt.”

  But they toiled manfully on over the extra three hundred yards back to the farmhouse.

  “Good God Almighty!” exclaimed Major Arkdust as we lay down our burden in the scullery. “What the hell are you playing at? Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves?”

  I saluted as smartly as my garments would allow.

  “Goodbody reporting, sir, having returned from patrol under indigenous disguise. I have brought back this German prisoner whom I captured when he was attempting to reconnoitre our positions dressed as an Arab.”

  “Did you, by George! How did you spot him?”

  “By his field boots, sir, protruding into view from under his burnous.”

  “Let’s have a look at the beggar.” He hitched up the gown and there were the telltale jackboots. “You’ve certainly got him trussed up. And laid out as well. Get him untied and we’ll see if we can bring him round…. In the meantime, Sergeant Major, get on the blower and tell the I.O.”

  We unbound the German, cut away his wrappings and pulled off his boots for safety.

  “He’s dressed like a Wog all through,” said the major, “and even his feet are brown.”

  “Damned thorough, the Boche, sir,” I said. “A bit of a scrub with paraffin and we’ll soon have the stain off.”

  Major Arkdust touched the crinkly, dark hair and pulled back an eyelid. Then he turned over the German’s hands to reveal the pink-padded palm. He took a long, slow breath.

  “You’ll not be changing his colour with paraffin. Nor anything short of skinning. What you’ve got here, Goodbody, is not a German dressed as a Wog. It’s a Wog dressed, as far as his feet are concerned, as a German. A plain, ordinary Wog who’s won a pair of field boots from a dead Boche.”

  I had not, since being knocked out, seen my captive in a good light. My company commander was indubitably right. I saluted smartly. One can always, at least, be polite.

  “A thousand apologies, sir. I have not previously had opportunity to examine the prisoner in detail owing to having been assaulted by grave robbers and …”

  “By whom?”

  “By Arab grave robbers, sir, who thought I was after their cache and prevented me …”

  He waved his hand across my face for silence.

  “My dear Goodbody, I just haven’t got the time. I’m fighting the Germans. I’ll leave the Arabs to you. That chap looks to me as if he’s got concussion. So just be a good fellow and take him down to the M.O. And for God’s sake get out of those blasted bed sheets.”

  I looked at my Bedouin corporals.

  “It’s only about five hundred yards,” I said. “And most of it down hill.”

  Groaning like galley slaves, they picked up their patient and raised him limply to their shoulders.

  “Gawd Strewth!” said Corporal Dooley as they maneuvered out through the scullery door. “Half the night up and down the Rocky Mountains, dressed up like the Sheikh of Araby, playing stretcher-bearer to a bloody Wog. If I’d have known about those grave robbers earlier, I’d have sent the
m down a free pardon and my own personal cutthroat.”

  Chapter Nine

  … if all the genius of the world had united to plan the perfect operation, the operation would fail most dismally if the troops were deficient in fortitude. A plan, that is, is ultimately dependent upon the soldier’s morale; and, other things being equal—or not grossly disparate—a battle is won by that side whose soldiers are prepared to deny their weariness, to maintain their purpose, and to go on fighting a little longer than the others …

  ERIC LINKLATER The Campaign in Italy

  THE TROOPS MUST BE drawn up in a hollow square, the instruction commanded, and a small platform erected in the centre so that no soldier is within twenty yards of it.

  It was one morning at the end of April 1943, that the Fourth Musketeers were thus drawn up on parade in a clearing of a cork forest near Beja. There was a flummery of top brass and then He strode along the hand-swept path and up on to the podium. He was a thin, ferret-faced little man, utterly lacking any of the beef, bull neck, and Poona-boom obligatory in the British High Command. His voice was rasping, high pitched, and dispassionate.

  “I’ve come here today to have a talk with you. Break ranks and gather round me.”

  For a moment, we hesitated, our reflexes unwilling to obey an order so alien to all our training.

  “Right,” muttered the R.S.M. “Break ranks. Get on with it.”

  The formal lines swayed, bulged, and then burst as the parade of soldiers became a crowd of people and we swayed forward around the platform. With the breaking of the rigid pattern of drill formation all the tension flowed out of the occasion. That mental block which debars from the brain of a soldier comprehension of a brass hat’s exhortation, was broken. At such military High Mass the minds of the congregation normally numb as their bodies stiffen to attention. The general speaks, but the soldier never gets the message.

  “I’ve just come here today,” He said, “to have a chat with you. We’re going to have a bit of a party soon. Good party it’s going to be, too. Really going to hit them for six this time. Right out of Africa, that’s where Rommel’s going this time. And I’ve come here to tell you how we’re going to do it. But before I do that I want to say two things to you. First, that you have done a fine job here in this difficult country of Tunisia. And second, that I’ve heard what a fine show the Musketeers have put up. Very fine show, indeed. Absolutely first-class job. But then the Musketeers always do a first-class job, don’t they?”