Roy had found a dirty black beret from somewhere. He was wrestling with the steering wheel when he said, ‘Permission to change hats, sir?’
I just grinned at him, and his forage cap joined mine in the foot well behind us. I said, ‘Of course, Roy, and we can give up the sir again out here, if you like. Most people call me Charlie.’
‘That would be difficult, sir, but I could call you nothin’ if you wanted.’
We agreed on that. It was the first of his conclusions which had matched Smart Alec’s: maybe he had the makings of an officer after all.
I can find my way around a map because our navigator in Tuesday, our wartime Lanc, had shown me the rudiments. It might have been a morbid way to look at things, but on our crew you always learned to do someone else’s job, in case he copped it. We were heading for a heap of stones left by the Romans, somewhere out ahead of us, but the navigation wasn’t essential . . . we just followed the tracks that the Centurions had left. Hey, Romans . . . Centurions; that was quite good. Their tank trail was about fifteen feet wide, and stretched into the distance. You could easily see where they had broken through the crests of the ridges they had crossed. Maybe this wouldn’t take so long after all.
And pigs might fly. This is Charlie’s world, remember?
The going definitely got softer. We had to use the sand mats in places, and Trigger warned me that we might have to unship the metal sand boards if this got any worse. Then we found a Centurion tank. It was empty, and its metal hull was too bloody hot to stand on for long. It had thrown a track in a softish wadi, under a hill of blown sand. The digging all around it told us a tale.
We found its crew of four half a mile further on, taking a breather. A sergeant and three men, who all turned as they heard Roy gunning the jeep through some loose stuff.
The sergeant stood up with a weary grin on his face, and when we were up alongside I asked, ‘Anyone fancy a lift?’
‘Christ, it’s a Jerry: don’t you know the war’s over, chum?’ I’d forgotten my cap. Then he said, ‘Thanks, chum; thought we’d have to walk the rest.’
Trigger coughed and said, ‘Thanks, chum, sir, I’m afraid, Sergeant. I have the misfortune to be driving an RAF officer in disguise.’
It didn’t faze the man. He asked me, ‘Are you the one out with Peter Clare, and that new Lieutenant?’
‘I’m afraid I am, but don’t hold it against me. Do you lot want to hop on?’
They did and they did, if you see what I mean. With six of us now, we bogged that much quicker if we strayed into the soft stuff, but we had three times as many people to get out and push, so it evened itself out. We caught up with the two remaining Centurion tanks an hour later. The Lieutenant in charge was just about to turn back to look for his lost charge, which, it just so happened was his only vehicle with a duff radio – he’d left them re-attaching a thrown track. Their radios were short-range jobs anyway – not good for much more than calling the next fag break.
‘We’ll look at the radio for you on the way back,’ I offered.
‘Tomorrow,’ he told me firmly. ‘It will be nightfall in an hour. With only the palsied lights on these things you won’t want to be messing about out there in the dark.’
If I am honest – and this will earn me no credit among the tankies – I have to tell you that our friends in the Royal Tank Regiment don’t make very good char. But their bully and bean sandwiches are desert food to die for. Their cookie had even baked a walloping great tray of bread pudding on top of a tank engine in the course of their travels, and we finished our meal off with a hefty chunk of it which set in my stomach like concrete. If only I’d had that the day before I wouldn’t have been in so much bother, would I? We sat round a desert stove between the metal giants, and jawed by the light of a small roaring Tilley lamp, and a big low full moon. You could almost imagine reaching up and touching it: you never get moons that size in Blighty. We leaned our backs against the armour plates which reached down to cover the tops of the tanks’ tracks – I never learned what they were called, but they retained the heat of the day and it was quite cosy.
At one point the Lieutenant leaned towards me and asked, ‘Why did you come out here? Why didn’t you just radio?’
‘Our bold leader was worried it would give his position away to the wogs again, so he sent us to find you. Only one message: the exercise is off . . . we’ve got to go home.’
‘I gathered that.’
‘Are you disappointed?’
‘Somewhat. I rather enjoy a bit of tanking.’ He was the only one I ever met who used the word that way.
‘I met some American tankies in the war in 1945 – in Europe.’
‘What were they like?’
‘As mad as monkeys. We liked them a lot.’
He didn’t respond. He just looked across the light at one of his sergeants, and grinned. This mob seemed to have got it all together.
Later I commented, ‘When I was getting a briefing I was shown a place on the map with some ruins. Is that far?’
‘You
