‘I think that maybe your sons have just saved your life.’ He paused, and we looked at each other. Just two men sizing each other up. ‘When you get back to England say hello to them, from a man named Camel. That will make them laugh . . . but never come back to my country in uniform again . . .’
‘Fine, Colonel.’
As I stood and turned away he said, ‘Now: be Lot’s wife. Walk away from me, up those steps, and never look back. Walk back to your comrades. Stay safe. Go home. Salute your children. Live long.’
I intended to. I stood and said, ‘Thank you, Colonel,’ and held out my hand.
He shook his head. ‘No. I am sorry. Not while you occupy my country . . .’ He made a quick crossways motion with his right hand, waving me away. Dismissed.
‘In happier times then, maybe . . .’ I told him.
I walked up the tiers of seats leaving my footprints in the sand. At the top the soldier with the Tommy gun shifted his weight against the jeep, and grinned again. He must have been used to looking after his eccentric boss. I walked away down the track, but a hundred yards on stopped, turned and looked back. Neither of the soldiers nor the jeep was there. I had heard nothing. Don’t ask me how they did that. It’s a mystery. I’d seen a bit of old Egypt and got away with it. I’d seen a bit of new Egypt as well, but I didn’t know it at the time. What goes around comes around.
When I got back to the tank laager two Arabs had joined them around the desert stove. One was performing magic sleight-of-hand tricks: a gully-gully man . . . and the other was selling fruit. I don’t know why we even bothered. They disappeared during the night, and didn’t steal a thing despite what people tell you about the wogs.
We turned back in the morning after sleeping in and on the vehicles, and being shaken out at dawn for the best part of the day. The tankies topped up their fuel tanks from spare petrol in jerrycans lashed to the hulls. It did cross my mind to wonder how close to its flashpoint the petrol in them became in the heat of the sun. Then they ran the engines to warm them up before they set off behind Trigger and me, and the lost crew. When I drove over the edge of the wadi in which I remembered we’d left the crocked Centurion I realized I’d cocked my navigation up.
‘Let me see the chart, sir,’ Roy Rogers asked me. After he’d spun it round and looked at it from different angles he offered, ‘I’m pretty certain that this is the right place.’
‘That’s what I thought.’ That was odd because there was a problem. The tank sergeant perched behind me expressed it for all of us.
‘Then where’s my fucking tank?’
Part of me thought this can’t be happening again, and that whipping two tanks inside a couple of weeks was gilding the lily a bit, so I kept my mouth shut. One of the Centurions we hadn’t lost was perched on the ridge behind us.
The tank commander hopped out, and strolled down. ‘Why’ve we stopped, lads? Trouble?’
‘Could be,’ I told him. ‘The last time we saw your third tank it was about four yards away from here without a track. It was going nowhere.’
‘Someone’s stolen it?’
‘Looks like it.’
‘Bugger! How can you steal something that size?’
‘They stole a Comet a couple of weeks ago.’ I pointed out. ‘In Suez.’
‘That’s just a fairy tale, Charlie. The British Army doesn’t lose its tanks; not until now, anyway.’ Ah. So that was it: least said, soonest mended.
There was also a story I’d heard about two British drivers stealing a couple of Comet tanks from a tank park in 1948, and handing them over to the Israelis, but this wasn’t the time to bring that up either.
He looked pensive. ‘I could get cashiered for this; and Mr Owen could lose his stripes.’ He said it again, ‘Bugger it!’
I asked him, ‘What would you need to move a tank that won’t work?’
‘These buggers weigh more than fifty tons, sir.’ That was the Sergeant, Owen. ‘If you can’t get the track back on her you’d need a tank transporter. But you’d never get one of those big bastards out here on this stuff.’
‘So somebody got the track back on it.’
‘Not possible, sir. It couldn’t be done.’
His Lieutenant kicked at the dirt and stone a bit before telling us, ‘That only leaves one possibility.’
Trigger finished his thought off for him, ‘That it hasn’t moved at all. Some bugger came up during the night and buried it.’ He was obviously brighter than the boys who’d lost the tank at Suez. If they had come to a similar conclusion, they could have saved me the drive.
In my memory there are only minutes between what was just said, and one of the tank crew saying Oi, in a loud and startled voice. He’d wandered a few yards away from us, and had felt the earth move beneath his feet. Literally, that is . . . and it was nothing to do with a woman.
A few minutes later my jeep’s spade cleared a few inches of loose soil where he had been standing, and we found ourselves on the flat top of the Centurion’s turret. It settled another inch while I was on it, and seemed canted slightly to one side. I jumped off, and scrambled back.
‘Bollocks. This stuff must be like quicksand if you weigh fifty ton. Can you pull her out?’
The Lieutenant answered, ‘Not a chance. I’d better radio a report in. Will your people relay it on to mine for us? All of a sudden I’ve gone off the
