The Sand Panthers (10 page)

He had not calculated that the only language the man would understand would be his own. ‘All right, Schulze,’ he decided swiftly, ‘let’s get him back. The Prof will have to explain everything to him in his own lingo. Come on – quick!

*  *  *

‘His CO’s name is Salah Mustafa – Major Mustafa,’ the ‘Prof translated the sentry’s words, as he squatted there, still a little fearful, in the middle of the crouched panzer grenadiers.

‘Ask him if he likes the English?’ von Dodenburg commanded. The Egyptian’s dark eyes blazed fanatically in response to this question and he drew his skinny brown forefinger across his throat as if he were slitting it open with a knife-blade.

‘Have they a radio station at the Oasis?’ was von Dodenburg’s next question.

The Egyptian answered that the British had one and they kept it exclusively under their control. Major Mustafa’s Egyptians were not allowed to use it.

Von Dodenburg checked his watch. In another thirty minutes it would be dawn and the Tommies undoubtedly would get up. Everyone rose early in the desert, even the English. He would have to act – and act quickly.

Keeping his eyes fixed on the sentry’s skinny face, he said: ‘Prof, tell him this – and make it simple and clear. He must wake his Major and tell him the Germans are coming in – in exactly thirty minutes. It will be the Major’s task to ensure that the Tommies do not get to that radio set before we move in. All right?’

With much gesticulation, accompanied by excited nodding on the part of the sentry, the ‘Prof’ translated von Dodenburg’s words. A few moments later he was gone, scuttling through the still palm trees to pass on von Dodenburg’s message to his commander.

Hurriedly von Dodenburg made his own preparations for the attack. The panzer grenadiers would go in from both sides. There was to be no firing until they reached the white bell tents. That way there would be no risk of their new allies being hurt. Both groups would rendezvous on the radio tent, easily identifiable by the twin radio masts attached to its exterior.

‘Remember no firing at all unless the Tommies put up any sort of resistance,’ were von Dodenburg’s last words and with that the panzer grenadiers dispersed to their start positions, the new recruits among them clutching their weapons nervously in suddenly damp hands.

*  *  *

But there was to be no combat for Sergeant Doerr’s panzer grenadiers that dawn. Five minutes before zero hour, von Dodenburg, crouching in the undergrowth with Schulze and the ‘Prof’, was startled by a sudden burst of machine-gun fire followed by a series of screams. He rose to his feet at once and blew his whistle shrilly. ‘Come in,’ he called and charged forward at the head of the other section of panzer grenadiers.

Their sudden rush came to a halt among the tents. Tommies, most of them naked or clad only in their underpants were lying slaughtered as they slept. While the SS men stood there shocked and bewildered, a group of grinning Egyptian soldiers butchered a grievously wounded Tommy, plunging their long bayonets time and time again into his naked back with wolfish pleasure. The tented camp was a bloody hell of murdered men, scuffed sand, gleaming empty cartridge cases, the groans of the dying drowned by the excited cries of the Egyptians who were already looting the possessions of the men whom they had just murdered. It was too much, even for hard-bitten Sergeant Doerr. He kicked the Egyptians plunging their bayonets into the body of the British soldier and shouted, ‘Stop it, you bunch of treacherous bastards!’

Von Dodenburg pulled him away just as the Egyptians’ commanding officer appeared from behind the radio tent.

‘Major Mustafa, at your service!’ he announced and raised his flabby hand to his jauntily tilted red fez, flashing von Dodenburg a gold-toothed smile. ‘We have done our job well – no?’

Von Dodenburg looked at the Major’s pale face adorned with an immense pair of dyed black moustaches in a ludicrous imitation of a British Army officer, and took an instant dislike to the man. All the same he saluted and said: ‘You have done an excellent job, Major. Let me introduce myself. Von Dodenburg, Major, SS Battalion Wotan.’

‘Charmed,’ Major Mustafa said and extended his hand.

Von Dodenburg took it. The hand was flabby, damp and disgusting. He swore to himself that he would not touch another person until he had washed his own hand. ‘Did you get the radio station, Major?’ he asked urgently.

Again the Major flashed that brilliant smile and indicated the young Tommy lying naked in the sand, a bayonet protruding from between his shoulder blades and what looked like a carving knife skewered right through his left leg and deep into the sand. ‘Yes, the pig didn’t want to die.’

‘The radio operator?’

‘Exactly,’ the Major smirked. ‘We of the Royal Egyptian Army are matched only by your own Army in efficiency.’ His smile vanished and he looked around the handful of panzer grenadiers grouped among the tents. ‘But is this all that his Excellency Marshal Rommel has sent us to rouse the Delta?’ he asked in sudden alarm.

Von Dodenburg shook his head and fought back his disgust; he had seen the sudden look of abject fear in the Egyptian’s black eyes. ‘No, I have a full company of tanks out there in the desert, waiting for my signal… Mark IVs,’ he added.

‘Mark IVs!’ the Major breathed, his fear vanishing immediately. ‘Excellent, the most powerful tank in the desert. Now we shall show those pigs of Englishmen.’

He spat viciously into the sand.

‘How?’ von Dodenburg protested. ‘I don’t even know who my contact is for the next stage of this operation.’

The Major smiled. ‘Be patient, my dear Major. We patriots have to be careful – very careful. The English have their spies everywhere in Egypt. As soon as my chaps have cleared away the mess in the radio tent, I shall personally raise our contact in Alexandria. No doubt, she will be here within twenty-four hours to give you full instructions.’

‘She!’ von Dodenburg exclaimed.

‘Yes,’ the Egyptian answered with a fat smile of pleasure. ‘Madame is the bravest of the brave. Not even Nassar and Sadat surpass her in courage and hatred of the English.’ He touched his swagger stick to his fez jauntily. ‘Now you must excuse me, Major, I must see that this rubbish’ – he kicked the young radio operator’s dead body – ‘is cleared away.’ He left von Dodenburg staring at his fat back in disbelief.

Madame!
Now he knew why Field-Marshal Rommel had laughed when he had told him about his contact. Von Dodenburg shook his head, like a man trying to wake from a heavy sleep. What had he let himself in for with this comic opera mob – what indeed…?

‘Now this is the form. There must be no more failures. The men have experienced too many of them – they will tolerate no more.’

General Montgomery to his Staff, El Alamein

‘You will please extinguish your cigarettes – and you will have exactly thirty seconds to cough. Thereafter there will be no more noise,’ the undersized, birdlike Commander announced, having, as always, a little difficulty with the pronunciation of his ‘r’s.

Dutifully the staff officers assembled outside his caravan stubbed out their cigarettes and cleared their throats. While the new commander of the Eighth Army spoke, they knew it would be fatal to cough. As they knew from the reports coming in from the U.K. about him, he had already pitched a full divisional commander out of a briefing for doing exactly that.

General Montgomery beamed at them intently. ‘Good,’ he said and tapped the big map pinned on the blackboard next to him. ‘Now, chaps, this is the form. The Battle of Alam Halfa last month delayed my own offensive. But if we’d have lost it, we would have lost Egypt to the Hun. Besides it was a boost for the Eighth Army and has given Tommy Atkins new confidence in the Command, which was sadly lacking in the past.’ He stared around at their faces, which were bronzed unlike his own, which was still white from an English winter. Some of the staff officers lowered their eyes, as if they were embarrassed by their commanders’ past failures.

Montgomery raised his voice. ‘Well, chaps, Alam Halfa is history. We are concerned with the future, eh? How are we going to knock Jerry for a six – and for good. That’s the problem?’ He tapped the map. ‘The basic problem that confronts us is a difficult one. We face Rommel between the sea and the Qattara Depression on a front of forty-five miles. Intelligence tells me that Rommel is strengthening his defensive positions to a depth previously unknown in the desert. In addition there is no open or easy flank for us to go through or turn. In essence, gentlemen, it is going to be a slogging match.’

He let the information sink in before continuing ‘I’m sure that Rommel is expecting us. It is impossible to conceal the fact that we are going to launch an attack. The best we can do is to achieve tactical surprise. Our deception experts are working on it

The staff officers looked knowingly at one another. What effective deception could Montgomery’s ‘experts’ carry out in the completely open desert? All the same the cocky General seemed supremely confident and that was new in 8th Army commanders.

If the new Commander saw their looks, he did not let himself be affected by them; he continued his exposé in the same self-assured manner as before. ‘Now, we’ll need a full moon to launch this one. The chaps will need to see their way through the Jerry minefields. Can’t have a waning moon. Why you may ask? Because I envisage a real dog-fight for about a week before we can break out and we’ll need all the light we can get at night. So, gentlemen, you can guess when we’re going to attack.’ He looked challengingly around his listeners’ faces like a keen schoolmaster, expecting the best from his brighter pupils. ‘Yes, Horrocks?’ he demanded of the long-faced, silver-haired commander of his XIII Corps.

‘About the end of October?’ General Horrocks ventured.

Montgomery beamed. ‘Exactly! According to the Met people, twenty-third of October to be completely precise, with full moon on the twenty-fourth. When do we attack then, chaps? I shall tell you. On the night of the twenty-third, just to keep Rommel on the hop.

Montgomery waited till the excited buzz of chatter had died away before he spoke again. ‘Now this is the form,’ he said and this time the thin smile on his lips had vanished and there was iron in his voice. ‘There must be no more failures. The men have experienced too many of them – they will tolerate no more. The people back home want victory, too. They have suffered nothing but defeats these last three black years. And, gentlemen,
I want victory!
Because my reputation depends upon it.’ Montgomery said the words without a trace of embarrassment and his audience was amazed. Didn’t he know that Rommel had beaten British commander after commander, smashed attack after attack, destroyed plan after plan? The Desert Fox always had some sort of trick up his sleeve. Would he not be able to turn the tables on this cocky little commander in the Tank Corps beret, who stood before them so bravely this burningly hot morning?

Montgomery seemed to be able to read their thoughts. He chuckled, a strange sound from a man who had so slight a sense of humour. ‘You think you’ve heard it all before – from the generals who preceded me, gentlemen, don’t you? Perhaps you have. But those gentlemen were not Bernard Montgomery. This time Rommel will not fool me.’ He turned as if he were about to go into his caravan again. Then he seemed to change his mind. Facing them once more, he said: ‘Let me tell you one last thing – in confidence – gentlemen. For the first two days or so of the battle I will not be fighting General Rommel. I shall be fighting his deputy, General Stumme. Rommel is on sick leave in Germany. Naturally he will hurry back once the battle starts, but by that time poor General Stumme will have lost it and I shall be the victor.’ He touched his hand to his beret very casually, pleased with the impact of this news. ‘Good morning. Thank you, gentlemen, that is all.’

‘Christ Almighty,’ a flabbergasted staff officer whispered to General Horrocks, after Montgomery had disappeared inside, ‘who the devil does he think he is –
God!
’

‘No,’ General Horrocks replied urbanely, ‘Jesus Christ would be my guess…’

If General Montgomery was confident that he was to be the victor of the impending battle, the few British and the many Egyptians of Delta’s second largest city, Alexandria, were definitely not. Their money was on a German breakthrough.

A ragged Slaughter, accompanied by the wide-eyed boy could see that Alex was in a flap. There were middle-class Egyptians and British Army staff wallahs packing up and leaving the endangered city everywhere, jeered at by the ragged Egyptian poor who lined the streets. Once a portly British colonel, with the red tabs of the staff on his jacket, accompanied by his young blonde mistress, pulled up in front of them, halted by a barefoot policeman on point-duty. The skinny onlookers jeered and spat at the car. Pointing at the city’s scavengers, the brown kites sailing lazily above them in the still air, they cried: ‘They’re waiting for you, fat Englishman, when the Germans come!

Richer Egyptians were flooding westwards in a slow moving mass of traffic, which grew even denser as the day wore on. Their cars were crammed with suitcases and shapeless bundles, and almost invariably topped by a canopy of striped mattresses tied on with scraps of rope as protection against aerial attacks. Over all the sweating, slow-moving column there hung an atmosphere of latent terror.

The boy looked at the Egyptians in wonder. Slaughter nudged him and said with contempt, ‘There are two species of men in the Delta, boy. The great mass of the fellaheen, miserable human scavengers – and those men you see in the motor cars: the masters. They smell of perfume and corruption –
and fear!
’ He spat in the dust. The two of them came in sight of the great barracks. In the whorehouses ringing the place the half-naked whores hung out of the windows jeering at the glum-faced soldiers and singing mockingly:

‘Me no likee English sold-ier

Ger-man soldier come ashore