magnified into a criminal betrayal, I could not prevent myself craving for Daphnis to an extent that at times became a positively physical ache. Then, just a fortnight after I had last seen her, Hitler went into Holland and Belgium, and as the news of the German successes trickled through in broadcasts and press, we all had something to think about in addition to our private worries.
Two days later it was decided to reinforce our outposts in the Western Desert, and the battalion to which I was attached was among those selected for the task. Periodically, for a long time past, Mussolini had been banging his little drum and this was one of his more bellicose periods, although few of us thought then that he would be fool enough to plunge Italy into war for the sake of obliging Hitler. It seemed so clear that he had everything to lose and nothing to gain. Abyssinia and the Italian East African Colonies would automatically be cut off from their homeland, so it could be only a matter of time before their garrisons were compelled to surrender. Libya lay naked in the breeze between the British in Egypt and the infinitely more powerful French Armies of Morocco, Algeria and Tunisia. We only had to squeeze and the wretched Italians, caught between two fires and cut off from succour by our Mediterranean Fleet, would be in a hopeless mess. That would be the end of the New Roman Empire. However, more, I think, with a view to reassuring the Egyptians than anything else, certain of the Australian and New Zealand troops were despatched to the Libyan border.
Mid-May was for us a period of intense activity, as the preparations for the move had to be carried out with the least possible delay, and within a few days we were converted from what had virtually been a training to a fighting unit; then there was the three-hundred-mile trek
via
Alex up to Mersa Matruh. The frontier was another hundred miles, but that was covered by outposts and flying columns of regulars. Mersa Matruh had better supplies of water than Sollum, Buq Buq or Sidi Barrani, and although it was hardly more than a large village it offered better harbour facilities, too, so for these reasons it had been selected as the main concentration point of the Imperial Forces in the Western Desert, and we were set to what then seemed the quite pointless task of strengthening its defences.
Actually, most of the work had to be done at night as one could not even lift a finger without sweating in the daytime. Sometimes the heat was so fierce that the men fainted fromcomparatively trifling exertions, and the temperature often went as high as 120 degrees in the shade. Owing to the extraordinary clarity of the atmosphere, however, one could see quite well for all ordinary purposes by starlight, and the moonlight was so bright that one could easily read or write letters by it.
We had ample water to drink but little to spare for other purposes, so permission was given to the men to grow beards, and we soon looked very different from the smartly-turned-out crowd that we had been in the days when we were stationed near Cairo. The sandfleas were an absolute pest, and before we had been in our new camp for a week I counted fifty-seven bites on one of my arms. Very soon we all grew to hate the very sight of the desert; but to remain there was our war for the time being, so there was nothing to be done about it.
All through those long hot days we watched with growing concern the collapse of Holland, the penetrations of France, the cutting-off of the northern French, British and Belgian Armies, the over-running of Belgium and the evacuation from Dunkirk.
It was hardly to be expected that, however bravely the Dutch fought, they would be able to stand up to the full weight of the German attack for long, and the German break-through at Sedan appeared at first to us onlookers as no more than a local disaster such as must be expected from time to time in the hazards of war. But, as we followed that
Two days later it was decided to reinforce our outposts in the Western Desert, and the battalion to which I was attached was among those selected for the task. Periodically, for a long time past, Mussolini had been banging his little drum and this was one of his more bellicose periods, although few of us thought then that he would be fool enough to plunge Italy into war for the sake of obliging Hitler. It seemed so clear that he had everything to lose and nothing to gain. Abyssinia and the Italian East African Colonies would automatically be cut off from their homeland, so it could be only a matter of time before their garrisons were compelled to surrender. Libya lay naked in the breeze between the British in Egypt and the infinitely more powerful French Armies of Morocco, Algeria and Tunisia. We only had to squeeze and the wretched Italians, caught between two fires and cut off from succour by our Mediterranean Fleet, would be in a hopeless mess. That would be the end of the New Roman Empire. However, more, I think, with a view to reassuring the Egyptians than anything else, certain of the Australian and New Zealand troops were despatched to the Libyan border.
Mid-May was for us a period of intense activity, as the preparations for the move had to be carried out with the least possible delay, and within a few days we were converted from what had virtually been a training to a fighting unit; then there was the three-hundred-mile trek
via
Alex up to Mersa Matruh. The frontier was another hundred miles, but that was covered by outposts and flying columns of regulars. Mersa Matruh had better supplies of water than Sollum, Buq Buq or Sidi Barrani, and although it was hardly more than a large village it offered better harbour facilities, too, so for these reasons it had been selected as the main concentration point of the Imperial Forces in the Western Desert, and we were set to what then seemed the quite pointless task of strengthening its defences.
Actually, most of the work had to be done at night as one could not even lift a finger without sweating in the daytime. Sometimes the heat was so fierce that the men fainted fromcomparatively trifling exertions, and the temperature often went as high as 120 degrees in the shade. Owing to the extraordinary clarity of the atmosphere, however, one could see quite well for all ordinary purposes by starlight, and the moonlight was so bright that one could easily read or write letters by it.
We had ample water to drink but little to spare for other purposes, so permission was given to the men to grow beards, and we soon looked very different from the smartly-turned-out crowd that we had been in the days when we were stationed near Cairo. The sandfleas were an absolute pest, and before we had been in our new camp for a week I counted fifty-seven bites on one of my arms. Very soon we all grew to hate the very sight of the desert; but to remain there was our war for the time being, so there was nothing to be done about it.
All through those long hot days we watched with growing concern the collapse of Holland, the penetrations of France, the cutting-off of the northern French, British and Belgian Armies, the over-running of Belgium and the evacuation from Dunkirk.
It was hardly to be expected that, however bravely the Dutch fought, they would be able to stand up to the full weight of the German attack for long, and the German break-through at Sedan appeared at first to us onlookers as no more than a local disaster such as must be expected from time to time in the hazards of war. But, as we followed that
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