‘Might I ’ave ’eard that you lost one of your fighter planes yesterday, sir?’
‘You might have.’
‘Anyone you knew?’
‘I share a tent with him.’
‘Bad luck, sir. I’m sorry to ’ear that.’
Bad luck, sir. Last words on Oliver Nansen, photographer. I can still picture him today, and wonder what he would have made of his life if it had got any further.
We got going again soon after that, lurching more slowly this time – maybe Sergeant Clare had been able to talk sense into our bold leader. The cab got hotter. I spread a handkerchief over my head, under my old RAF peaked cap, and let it cover my neck. Trigger did the same, but his small forage cap couldn’t hold it in place. We both stripped to the waist, and still sweated. I don’t know of any proper serviceman who gained weight in the Canal Zone: the only fat people you met were senior officers and wealthy Arabs. By the time we stopped for a breather, we were both all in.
Smart Alec called us all together after we had fed and watered. He was good at calling people together: they get taught that in Brown Jobs officer school. He’d placed a small table top of wood over the desert stove I’ve told you about before – a small Castrol oil drum full of sand, topped off with petrol and set alight. The hot sand retained the heat, and you could brew up on it in minutes. It could also burn things, but no one had told him that. He opened a map on the impromptu table.
‘Gather round, lads, I want to show you where we are, and what we’re doing.’
He placed the point of a silver propelling pencil at a position on the map. Even with my rudimentary navigational skills I could see he was about an inch out. The point rested on a ridge point: we were actually in a wadi at least three miles away.
He said, ‘We’re here . . .’
I sensed Trigger’s arm being raised. He was alongside me, and we were behind the Lieutenant, so I firmly pulled it down again. He’d done himself enough damage for one day; let someone else try. No one did immediately.
‘We’re going into the blue up here . . .’ Somehow the words didn’t work the way he used them. Maybe he hadn’t earned them yet; it was as simple as that. ‘. . . following the three tanks which preceded us. This is an exercise – a proper military exercise – and I intend that we shall win.’
‘Win what?’ one of the squaddies muttered. Smart Alec picked him up.
‘Win over the other side – another patrol that’s coming into the desert from the Suez – Cairo road. They are supposed to ambush us, and we are not going to allow ourselves to be ambushed. Anyone from my patrol who ends up ‘killed’ or ‘captured’ in this exercise will be up on a charge. We need to know that we can fight and win in the desert – and therefore this area of desert has been certified available for exercises for the first four months of the year.’
One of the unwary asked, ‘Do the Gyppoes know that, sir?’
‘Don’t call them Gyppoes, Green. Try Egyptians. In answer to your question the Egyptians do know that. They won’t interfere because this area is under British protection.’ We were protecting several thousand square miles of absolutely fuck-all with a canal running through it. ‘And because this is an exercise, most of you will be issued with blank ammunition before we move on. Keep your live rounds in your ammo pouches, and your weapons loaded with blanks.’
Green, God bless him, was a Geordie, and a persistent bugger. ‘. . . and if the Egyptians start shooting at us with real bullets, sir?’
‘Reload with live ammunition, Mr Green, and let the buggers have it! Do I really have to tell you that?’
As far as I could see there was a flaw in this operation, which the planners back at base hadn’t spotted. In my experience, it was the guy who got the first shot in who usually survived a homicidal encounter. If we met a band of renegade Gyppoes intent on murder, we were likely to be at an initial disadvantage. The mad sod was going to get someone killed.
The wooden table top on the desert stove was beginning to smell very warm, and if I wasn’t mistaken Smart’s map was beginning to char at the edges. He whipped it away, and began to beat at it with the other hand, dancing around and shouting, ‘Bugger, bugger, bugger!’ and then it was, ‘Mount up; mount up . . .’ as if we were a troop of Household Cavalry.
As Trigger and I trudged to the radio van I whispered, ‘Find out what the Sergeant thinks about all this, because I don’t know about you, but it’s making me windy.’
‘Mutiny’s a capital offence in the Army, sir.’
‘Only if you’re found out.’
‘Sergeant Clare wouldn’t approve.’
‘Who would be asking him to?’
In the Austin’s oven of a cab, I had left my jacket draped over the back of the driver’s seat; I felt into its pockets to make sure my own small pistol was still there. Don’t worry; I wasn’t planning to murder the sod.
Before we moved off the Army signaller sent off a positioning call – he was niftier than I would have thought, but also had that look in his eyes: the one that said his hands moved faster than his brain. He also signalled to the Centurion tanks somewhere up ahead. I thought I’d have to keep an eye on him.
Then I took over for fifteen minutes, and
