A Good Clean Fight by Derek Robinson Page A

discovered what it was like to have to run: they had been chased for an hour, flat out, by vehicles that might have been German armored cars or might have been a roaming unit from the flank of the Eighth Army. Nobody could identify them and nobody wanted to let them get close enough to be identifiable, so the patrol just turned and ran, trying not to think about punctures and hoping that if there were any soft sand about, the other lot would get stuck in it. In the end they out-ran them and never found out whether it was a great escape or all a waste of time. That’s what happened when you were lucky. If you were unlucky and they jumped you, it would probably be a very brief fight. In fact it probably wouldn’t be any kind of fight, just a sudden storm of heavy machine-gun fire laced with cannon shells, and the patrol vehicles, being soft-skinned, would get torn to bits. What would happen to the members of the patrol, being even more soft-skinned, wasn’t worth thinking about.
    Lampard, Dunn and the navigator, Gibbon, walked to the top of the nearest hillock. After hours of engine-roar, the silence was so total that it was almost painful. The desert had the same kind of crystalline stillness you get on nights of intense frost. The stillness and the silence formed a powerful presence: to break them was to reveal how great they were, how little you were.
    The three men stood and listened. Nothing.
    â€œVarious possibilities,” Lampard said. “Jerry has no patrols out looking for us. Jerry has patrols out, but not near here. The patrols are near here, but they’re hiding in a wadi, waiting for daylight.”
    â€œIs there anything we can do to alter any of those possibilities?” Gibbon asked.
    â€œNo.”
    â€œThat’s what I thought.”
    They walked back to the fire. “Jerry won’t try to jump us before dawn,” Dunn said. “He hasn’t the faintest idea how strong we are.”
    â€œMr. Schramm will tell him,” Gibbon said.
    â€œSchramm’s still hiking across the Jebel. Anyway, nobody knows we’re the same outfit that attacked Barce. We could be a completely different patrol, lousy with mortars and bazookas and pom-poms plus a couple of anti-tank guns in the boot.”
    â€œI wish we were,” Gibbon said.
    â€œI don’t,” Lampard said. “If you want to slug it out, go and join the Tank Corps. Ah, bacon!” He rubbed his hands and leaned over the fire to sniff the aroma.
    â€œHe always says that,” Gibbon said to Dunn. “Every morning he says
Ah, bacon!
What does he expect? Jam sandwiches?”
    â€œI think he likes bacon,” Dunn said.
    â€œIf there’s one thing I like,” Lampard said to Sergeant Davis, “it’s bacon.”
    â€œOne day we’ll have scrambled eggs,” Gibbon said, “and he’ll still say
Ah, bacon!
You mark my words.”
    â€œGot any eggs?” Dunn asked the cook.
    â€œOnly dried.” The cook was busy forking bacon into mess tins.
    â€œDon’t like scrambled eggs,” Lampard said. “They remind me of my prep school. The headmaster’s brother kept a chicken farm. We used to say that if you eat eggs all the time, you feel down in the mouth.”
    A fitter called Blake said: “I wouldn’t send any kids of mine away to boarding school.” He spat out a bit of rind. “Not natural.”
    They were standing in a circle around the fire. The air was as warm as a sunny English summer afternoon, but the night was still black.
    â€œOh, I don’t know,” Dunn said. “After ten years at boarding school, the rest of life comes as rather a pleasant surprise.”
    â€œWho’s to say what’s natural?” Davis asked.
    â€œJoe Harris wasn’t natural,” Corporal Pocock said, and took a quick swig of tea as if to wash away the taste of the words.
    Tony Waterman, the signals officer, happened to be