until they looked like sardines. The engines started and the convoy began to move. Someone started a song that inevitably lapsed into the usual filthy ballad.
‘Stanna shwaya. Oh desire!
Stanna shwaya, pull your wire!’
Private Docwra, staring around with a dropped jaw, stopped it dead. ‘Wheyhey,’ he said. ‘Where are they takkin’ us? This isnae the way to Cape Town.’
No more it was. They were heading west, which was nearer the fighting.
They finally stopped, alongside a stretch of drab tents, forlornly flapping in the dusty breeze as though they’d been standing there on the edge of the desert since Napoleon had fought the Battle of the Pyramids. There was no village - just an escarpment with a succession of wadis, a puddle of water round a few rocks and a couple of palms. To the Arabs it was known as Gott el Scouab. In addition to the tents, it contained a few huts and two or three marquees, a lorry park, a cookhouse, a petrol store, an arms store, a Naafi, a bored staff and a church. Since it had once been used as a prisoner of war camp for Catholic Italians, one of the wire-mesh windows of the church had been taken out and reverently replaced with one made from the bottoms of brown, green and white beer bottles. It now served every denomination in the army, and was known as St Martin’s-in-the-Sands.
A fat dough-faced cook-corporal called Rogers and a dozen greasy minions served them a meal. Then Sergeant-Major Rabbitt, who had arrived by car half an hour ahead of them, began to get them organized. ‘All right, all right, all right,’ he roared. ‘Get yourselves into a half-circle! The colonel wants a word with you!’
Aware that whatever it was they’d landed this time it was obviously going to be infinitely worse than Death Valley, they reluctantly shuffled into place. When Hockold appeared, Sugar-white and Waterhouse recognized him at once as the man who’d got them off when they’d looked like spending the rest of their natural lives pounding the dusty square at Akkaba. They began to cheer up. If he could work one miracle of that sort, he could perhaps work a few more.
‘Right -’ someone had placed an ammunition box on the sand and Hockold climbed on to it ‘- just gather round, so you can hear’
‘Thingks ‘e’s the gederal.’ Waterhouse’s nasal whisper sounded above the muttering as they moved nearer. ‘ ‘E goes id for this, they say.’
Hockold lifted his cane to indicate that the muttering should stop. ‘As of this moment,’ he said, ‘you are no longer Jocks, Welsh or British. You’re not East Yorks, Argylls, Seaforths, Susseckers, Buffs or whatever else you were before.’
There was a buzz of comment. No British soldier liked to have his regiment snatched from under his feet. To lose your regiment was one degree worse than losing your trousers. If you joined as a light infantryman, you were a light infantryman for the rest of your life, while a Guardsman remained a Guardsman for ever and ever, amen, right to the Last Trump. A Buff was a Buff. A Diehard was a Diehard. And nothing on God’s earth could make a Gordon into a Black Watch. Except authority. And authority seemed to be throwing its weight around at that moment.
Hockold drew a deep breath. ‘As of now, you are Number 97 Commando,’ he said, and waited with bated breath for a bolt of thunder and lightning from Combined Operations HQ to strike him down because he had no authority whatsoever as yet to give them such a title and it had only been agreed on as a temporary means of giving them an identity.
There was a moment’s silence then Bradshaw grinned. ‘Detribalized, by God,’ he said, and there was another buzz of muttered conversation. They weren’t sure whether to be pleased or not, but in most of them there was a feeling of relief. A few were even happy, because it meant they were on their way. In a few breasts like Lieutenant Swann’s, glory even lit a small lamp.
To one or two others - like
‘Stanna shwaya. Oh desire!
Stanna shwaya, pull your wire!’
Private Docwra, staring around with a dropped jaw, stopped it dead. ‘Wheyhey,’ he said. ‘Where are they takkin’ us? This isnae the way to Cape Town.’
No more it was. They were heading west, which was nearer the fighting.
They finally stopped, alongside a stretch of drab tents, forlornly flapping in the dusty breeze as though they’d been standing there on the edge of the desert since Napoleon had fought the Battle of the Pyramids. There was no village - just an escarpment with a succession of wadis, a puddle of water round a few rocks and a couple of palms. To the Arabs it was known as Gott el Scouab. In addition to the tents, it contained a few huts and two or three marquees, a lorry park, a cookhouse, a petrol store, an arms store, a Naafi, a bored staff and a church. Since it had once been used as a prisoner of war camp for Catholic Italians, one of the wire-mesh windows of the church had been taken out and reverently replaced with one made from the bottoms of brown, green and white beer bottles. It now served every denomination in the army, and was known as St Martin’s-in-the-Sands.
A fat dough-faced cook-corporal called Rogers and a dozen greasy minions served them a meal. Then Sergeant-Major Rabbitt, who had arrived by car half an hour ahead of them, began to get them organized. ‘All right, all right, all right,’ he roared. ‘Get yourselves into a half-circle! The colonel wants a word with you!’
Aware that whatever it was they’d landed this time it was obviously going to be infinitely worse than Death Valley, they reluctantly shuffled into place. When Hockold appeared, Sugar-white and Waterhouse recognized him at once as the man who’d got them off when they’d looked like spending the rest of their natural lives pounding the dusty square at Akkaba. They began to cheer up. If he could work one miracle of that sort, he could perhaps work a few more.
‘Right -’ someone had placed an ammunition box on the sand and Hockold climbed on to it ‘- just gather round, so you can hear’
‘Thingks ‘e’s the gederal.’ Waterhouse’s nasal whisper sounded above the muttering as they moved nearer. ‘ ‘E goes id for this, they say.’
Hockold lifted his cane to indicate that the muttering should stop. ‘As of this moment,’ he said, ‘you are no longer Jocks, Welsh or British. You’re not East Yorks, Argylls, Seaforths, Susseckers, Buffs or whatever else you were before.’
There was a buzz of comment. No British soldier liked to have his regiment snatched from under his feet. To lose your regiment was one degree worse than losing your trousers. If you joined as a light infantryman, you were a light infantryman for the rest of your life, while a Guardsman remained a Guardsman for ever and ever, amen, right to the Last Trump. A Buff was a Buff. A Diehard was a Diehard. And nothing on God’s earth could make a Gordon into a Black Watch. Except authority. And authority seemed to be throwing its weight around at that moment.
Hockold drew a deep breath. ‘As of now, you are Number 97 Commando,’ he said, and waited with bated breath for a bolt of thunder and lightning from Combined Operations HQ to strike him down because he had no authority whatsoever as yet to give them such a title and it had only been agreed on as a temporary means of giving them an identity.
There was a moment’s silence then Bradshaw grinned. ‘Detribalized, by God,’ he said, and there was another buzz of muttered conversation. They weren’t sure whether to be pleased or not, but in most of them there was a feeling of relief. A few were even happy, because it meant they were on their way. In a few breasts like Lieutenant Swann’s, glory even lit a small lamp.
To one or two others - like
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