He turned away, but walked back to me as I was about to climb up into the cab – it was nearly four feet off the ground. ‘Just one last thing, Mr Bassett. In a normal army in normal times, we would be said to be going out on what would be described as an armed patrol. This is not a normal army, and these are not normal times. We are not officially at war with Egypt – it is just an unfriendly power – so what you are about to be engaged on is called a scheme, not a patrol, goddit?’
‘Yes, Sergeant. I understand.’
His voice dropped about ten decibels. I think that Rogers was probably the only other person in earshot. Clare continued, ‘No, sir; I don’t think you do. What I am saying is that you are definitely not to kill anyone until I tell you to. Understood?’
‘Yes, Sergeant. Now I understand.’
It was as I climbed up into the cab that I saw the Sten that Corporal Rogers had placed in the foot well.
He said, ‘Welcome to the Sons of the Desert, sir. I’m Roy Rogers.’
‘Pleased to meet you, Roy. I’m Charlie.’
‘OK, sir.’ He nodded to where Clare was getting back into his jeep. ‘Don’t take any notice over what the Sarge just said. Just start shooting as soon as I tells you to; and I want good body shots every bleedin’ time, capisce?’ We were all using the word now. Too many bloody Eyetie film stars in the world, weren’t there?
We could have driven an hour up the Canal, and crossed on a swing bridge, and been seen by all the world and his mother, but Clare turned out to be too canny for that. We drove out of Deversoir, down to the Bitter Lake shore, and loaded up onto two landing craft. LCVs they called them, and I managed to cross the lake without getting seasick. It took about twenty minutes to load the two lorries onto one of the LCVs, and the jeep and the K5 onto the other. I got the feeling that Clare was not going to let me out of his sight for a while. I didn’t blame him. I wouldn’t have trusted a desert novice not to fuck something up, either. We passed two flat-tops moored about fifty yards apart. One of them had about thirty bored-looking squaddies in shorts sitting on it. They waved and jeered as we chugged past. We got a few of Winston’s salutes as well.
‘Swimming lesson number six,’ Rogers informed me. We’d just been given the OK to smoke, and were leaning over the side.
‘What?’
‘It’s how they teach you to swim out here. You get a week’s light duty, but you’re expected to attend the swimming pool – like the RAF pool at Abu Sueir – for five consecutive days. Then they take you out to two barges – usually on Lake Timsah – and get you to swim from one to the other in PT half kit. That’s swimming lesson number six. If you don’t drown your record is marked that the Army’s taught you to swim.’
‘You won’t catch me doing that. I can’t stand water. I can’t breathe in it.’
‘You don’t have to. Your head’s underneath it most of the time, so all you have to do is remember to keep yer mouth shut.’
I had never been any good at keeping my mouth shut. That was probably written into my record somewhere as well.
The Sergeant was sitting in the well of the craft with his back against its side. His beret, already thick with dust and the other shit in the air, was tipped over his eyes, and his easy breathing suggested he was asleep. He’d adopted this position as soon as he was satisfied that the jeep and the K5 were properly lashed down. He didn’t even stir when I joined him. After about five minutes of the gentle buffeting of the vessel, my chin dropped to my chest too, and my eyes closed. I could cope with this: like a bleeding holiday camp. I opened my eyes again when he spoke to me. I don’t know how long I’d been dozing.
He suddenly asked, ‘What do you think of Egypt so far, Mr Bassett?’
‘It stinks.’
Then he surprised me by asking, ‘Literally or metaphorically, would that be?’
‘Both, Sergeant.’
He grunted and stopped speaking. Had that been a test question? If so, had I given the correct answer? My eyes closed again. When I awoke Trigger was whistling Irving Berlin’s ‘Blue skies’. I still have the Josephine Baker recording of that, and when I play it am immediately transported in my mind to two small ships bobbing up and down on the Great Bitter Lake. Three quarters of an hour later everyone started to move around again, and ten minutes after that we were driving up onto a stony shore with a few scrub trees. Then I realized why Moses led his people out of Egypt. It had nothing to do with the persecution of the tribe of Israel, and nothing to do with God promising them another land. It was because Egypt is such a horrible fucking place to begin with.
There were ten of us. Two in each vehicle cab and two spare. The others were all Ordnance Corps according to their flashes, but the RAOC conceals a multitude of sins; these bastards could have a hundred homicidal skills or none at all. The two spares did most of the domestics.
The land rose and fell, but always in gentle slopes, and even the valleys were shallow stony places. We ground along open scrub desert and old camel tracks – sometimes where they crossed each
