Take or Destroy! (30 page)

There was a wooden jetty, surrounded by native boats, extending into the harbour in front of the gun, and the gun crew was having difficulty in bringing their weapon to bear. It had never been intended to fire the gun into the town and the wooden masts and rigging of the feluccas were in the way so that the shells were missing the low buildings where Hockold’s party were established. Even as Sugarwhite considered the situation, a third shell hit the base of the Roman arch. His eyes widened as he saw it teeter, moving almost like a tree in a high wind. Then it toppled and crashed, bas reliefs of Roman legionaries and all, thundering down in a heap of ancient stones and a cloud of lifting dust. To Sugarwhite there seemed something terribly sad in an edifice which had defied nature for two thousand years being knocked to pieces by some bloody rotten little Nazi gunner; it helped to poison his attitude a little bit more.

The bullets were still stirring the dust nearby. He had no idea where anybody else was and was terrified of being shot by his own side.

‘War Weapons Week, Weymouth,’ he yelled into the whirling dust.

‘Over here, you soft sod,’ a voice called back from a group of mud-brick houses alongside the mosque and, taking advantage of the confusion that the fallen arch had caused, he set off for them in a crouching run. As he did so, a burst of firing from the houses across the Shariah Jedid made him dive rather more hurriedly for shelter than he’d intended and he knocked his knee badly and jarred his injured fingers.

As he sat up he saw Sergeant Freelove staring down at him. ‘Where’ve you been?’ he demanded angrily.

Sugarwhite looked up indignantly. ‘I’ve been getting shot at,’ he said. ‘That’s where! I think I’ve broken my ribs!’

Freelove seemed unimpressed and gestured towards the remains of the Roman arch and the settling dust. ‘Well, you’re needed up there,’ he said sourly. ‘Up by them houses. Get stuck in!’

Sugarwhite had expected at least a ‘How are you?’ or a mug of tea and a word of sympathy, but all he’d got was ‘Get stuck in’ as if he’d been shirking. But then, as he crouched down by the mud dwellings, he realized what was causing Freelove’s impatience. Hickey, the American doctor, was using the shelter of the buildings as a dressing station and the area around him was like a scene from a nightmare. Small groups of men were huddled there, clutching injured limbs, their faces pale and desperate in the glare of the flames which made their bloodstains look black. They had lost all interest in the battle and were concerned now only with getting to safety. Around them, stones and rubble were scattered across the road under the drifting dust and smoke. Not far away two or three dead Germans sprawled like half-empty sacks of flour. Behind him, a stone-built hut was burning fiercely, someone still screaming inside. Alongside it there was a dead mule and a bullet-chipped cart, and in its shelter Hickey was crouching over a man who still clutched his rifle with pain-filled desperation.

Another man was lying on his side, his trousers slit to the thigh, a bandage round a shattered knee, and near him an RAF corporal lay propped against a pack, snoring with a wound in the head. Mitchell, one of the Stooges, was by the side of the road, quite still, his hips and legs twisted unnaturally. A fourth man was trapped under a collapsed wall, moaning, his hair white with dust. ‘Oh, Christ,’ he was muttering. ‘Oh, Christ, my back!’ Two or three other men were trying to drag him out, tossing bricks and rubble aside with a ferocious, desperate speed. As Sugarwhite stared, sudden tears in his eyes, he saw Hickey, his hands red with blood, crawl over to him and, breaking the seal of the morphia capsule of a hypodermic, calmly begin to screw on the needle.

Someone was mewing with terror nearby and Sugarwhite saw it was Taffy Jones, cowering under a hand-cart containing drums of petrol, his head down, his face chalk-white, a string of saliva hanging from his open mouth. Remembering his old ebullience, Sugarwhite gaped at him aghast. Yet somehow he couldn’t condemn as a coward a man who could so publicly display his funk when all the rest, just as afraid as he was, felt obliged to hide theirs in case their friends should sneer. Sugarwhite gulped, hating every German in the world for the suffering they had caused, even for the humiliation they were bringing on the wretched Taffy.

There was another explosion and the air buffeted him, knocking his helmet over his ear with a hard jolt; somewhere nearby a machine-gun shuddered in a long run and a geyser of smoke which had lifted into the air began to drift past him. The whole bloody place was full of gusts and cracks and flashes of light, and as he lifted his head he heard Gardner who was firing around a corner of one of the huts give a little gasp and saw him start to sway. His head began to roll, his face turning blindly as if trying to make out where he’d been hit, and he slid down the wall of the hut; one arm still moving feebly as he gradually sank to his knees, his head bowing forward, a hand clutching his chest, so that he looked like an Arab making his obeisances to Mecca.

One of the American orderlies ran to him but the machine-gun started again and, just as Sugarwhite joined him at Gardner’s side, he fell across the wounded man, a gaping hole in his neck. Sugarwhite stared in horror, wondering in a panic which of the two men he should attend to first. There seemed to be little sign of injury on Gardner but the American was losing blood with great speed.

Trying to remember what he’d learned about first-aid, Sugar-white dragged out his field dressing and tried to bandage him, but the blood spurted over his hands, drenching his sleeves and splashing his face. The American groaned and twisted as Sugar-white tore at his shirt to staunch the flow. Then, with unexpected suddenness, he became quiet, his face grey, and Sugarwhite laid him down, choking with a sense of futility. Gardner was also silent by this time and Sugarwhite looked round, desperate for someone to tell him what to do, seeking encouragement, even a faint sign of success somewhere among the slaughter.

But Sergeant Freelove was now busy with Mitchell while Taffy Jones still crouched with his head down, indifferent to everything. He had reached the end of terror now, the extreme of emotional degradation. Half delirious, he was grasping at the dusty earth, hunched, panting, not looking up, one hand combing through his greasy hair, his eyes dilated, his cheeks blanched with horror.

‘Let’s get out of here,’ someone said, infected by his fear, and Freelove turned from where he was bent over Mitchell.

‘Shut up,’ he snapped. He lashed out with his boot at Taffy. ‘Pull your bloody self together, man! You!’ He glared at Sugarwhite. ‘Get up forward!’

Sugarwhite nodded speechlessly, thankful for even the smallest indication of leadership. He glanced at Gardner still kneeling head-down alongside the wall and, concerned for him, remembering that he’d been the first man at Gott el Scouab to show any sign of friendliness towards him, he pawed at him unhappily, wondering if he could do something to help. But the Yorkshireman didn’t move and Sugarwhite saw that he’d gone as grey as the American.

‘Go on!’ He realized Freelove was staring at him. ‘What are you waiting for?’

Sugarwhite nodded again and, grasping his rifle and scrambling to his feet, scuttled through the drifting dust from the fallen arch towards the buildings opposite the mosque. As he flung himself down, he saw Hockold crouching behind a wall with Amos who had a bandage round one of his hands. With them were Waterhouse, Belcher, Tinner Eva, and Docwra who had blood on his face and looked as though he’d like to be sick. As Sugarwhite stared around him, trying to make out who was alive and who was dead, a shell from the 75 above the POW compound whistled past the front of the German headquarters and exploded on the harbour wall. The blast knocked Sugarwhite’s helmet over his ear again and sent him staggering. As he picked himself up, he saw on the wall a canary in one of the little wooden cages the Italians seemed to like. It was terrified by the racket, fluttering inside its prison and beating its wings frantically against the bars. Sugarwhite gazed at it for a moment, thinking angrily what a bloody silly lot the Italians were to bring a singing bird into a place like Qaba to be frightened to death.

As he took the cage down, a sniper’s bullet spanged against the stonework a foot from his head. He collapsed in a heap, his eyes full of gritty dust and shocked by his narrow escape. He was burning with hatred against the Germans. It seemed they were venting their spite on him alone. His ribs hurt, and his futile rage was laced through with an agonizing misery at the death of his friends. Placing the cage in a corner, he watched the canary’s panic die away to sporadic flutterings. Then he patted the cage as if to say, ‘It’ll be all right now,’ and gripped his rifle, looking round for something on which he could work off his loathing of the Nazis.

It was at that moment that Wutka burst out from among the buildings by the Boujaffar on the motor-bike. Firing was coming from the houses opposite and most of the men with Hockold were occupied with keeping it down, so that only Hockold and Sugarwhite, facing directly towards Ibrahimiya, spotted him. Sugarwhite froze, the skin tight across his jaw. Wutka was clearly an officer and, to the infuriated Sugarwhite, the sort of brutal SS Nazi who had caused so much wretchedness in the world. It was a long shot but the bullet hit Wutka in the small of the back to sever his spine as if it had been chopped with an axe.

As Wutka let go of the handlebars and toppled backwards, the motor-bike went careering onwards to crash into the corner of the naval barracks and fall over with spinning wheels, leaving him spreadeagled in the middle of the road, staring at the stars, aware with his last shreds of consciousness that before long there would be no stars, no sky, nothing but darkness.

‘Good shot, Abdul,’ Hockold said, and Sugarwhite turned, startled and more pleased that Hockold knew his nickname than by the fact that he’d killed the German. It was almost as good as if he’d shot Hitler.

As Wutka died, Nietzsche was turning his attention to the men infiltrating the buildings by the ruined arch. His snipers were in position and every time anyone in the centre of the town raised his head a rifle cracked. But the British were not giving ground, and he turned to the sergeant alongside him.

‘I think we might get them with mortars,’ he said. ‘Bring them up.’

As the sergeant hurried off, bent double, Nietzsche crept to the window to look at the position below. A sniper was crouching there, his face pressed against the brickwork, only the edge of his cheek and his eye showing. As Nietzsche reached him, he gestured to him to keep down.

Then the sniper pulled the trigger and Nietzsche lifted his head again for a quick look. The firing below had died a little and the British seemed to have gone to ground again.

In fact, they had just discovered Dr Garell’s bunker below the harbour wall.

‘Sir -’ Sergeant Freelove came running bent double to where Hockold was crouching ‘- there’s a German dressing station just behind us. There’s a doctor there.’

‘Right.’ Hockold turned and scrambled back with him to Dr Hickey by the mud huts. ‘Sergeant Freelove’s found somewhere for you to set up an aid post,’ he said. ‘You’d better get going. We’ll cover you.’

As the firing broke out again, the American and his orderlies ran for the harbour wall, bent double, carrying and dragging the wounded with them. Hockold went after them and Dr Carell, wearing a white apron, turned to meet them as they appeared. He had three wounded Germans and an Italian with him.

‘Sprechen Sie Englisch?
’ Hockold asked.

Carell nodded.

‘I’m taking this place over. Are you a doctor?’

Again Carell’s head inclined.

‘Well, you can consider yourself my prisoner or you can help with the wounded. Whichever you like. You need fear nothing from my people if you help.’

Carell’s head came up. ‘You have no need to threaten me, Herr Oberst,’ he said. ‘I’m a doctor and there are no nationalities among injured men.’

When Hockold got back, Amos was bending over Sergeant Freelove who’d just been hit in the neck.

‘Sniper,’ Amos said. ‘He’s up there among the houses somewhere.’

Eva, crouching among the bricks near Sergeant Sidebottom, turned. ‘Would ‘ee like me to get ‘un, sir?’

‘Know where he is?’ Hockold asked.

‘In yon window wi’ the red blind, sir! ‘E keeps shovin’ his head up for a look.’

‘Think you can?’

‘I can take a mouse’s eye out, sir.’

As Hockold called for stretcher-bearers for Freelove, Eva rested his rifle on his pack and squinted along it.

There was still a lot of firing, and Hockold turned to glance at Swann and Jacka crouching down beside him. It was time they were moving off towards the warehouse but there was no point in their getting themselves killed for a matter of a minute or so of waiting.

He directed the machine-gunners towards the windows where the firing was coming from and it died a little. Then Eva’s rifle cracked, and he looked round to see a figure rise in the window with the red blind and flop back out of sight.

‘Got the mucky toad,’ Eva said happily. ‘That’s two!’

The sniper stared round at Nietzsche laying flat on his back alongside him, one eye a bloody hollow, his face mildly surprised, then he turned to shout to Unteroffizier Upholz in the next room.

‘They’ve got the major! He’s dead.’

Upholz gestured and a corporal ran to the sniper’s room. But he was foolish enough not to keep his head far enough down, and the joyful Eva put a bullet straight through his temple to slam him against the far wall.

‘Three,’ he yelled. ‘They don’t know the first thing about it!’

The sniper squirmed on his stomach to the next room where Unteroffizier Upholz and half a dozen men were firing industriously towards the remains of the Roman arch.

‘They got the corporal as well,’ he said flatly. ‘This place’s getting too dangerous.’

As the firing from the house opposite died, Swann stood up. He was annoyed at the narrow escape he’d had but by no means scared. Crouching among the trees with the bullets whistling over his head, his exultation burst out in a great shout of excitement.