Rafferty was more than satisfied with their new site. ‘There’s just one thing,’ he pointed out. ‘We need some equipment.’
‘Equipment?’ Dampier’s head jerked up. ‘Why do we need equipment?’
Rafferty was very patient. ‘If we’re intendin’ to stay here, sir, it’s going to be for several days at least now, and in that case we have to have a reason for bein’ here.’
‘A reason for being here?’
‘Sir’ – Rafferty’s patience slipped a little – ‘we’re not part of a cup-final crowd. If anybody asks us what we’re doin’ here, what do we say?’
What he was getting at finally penetrated. ‘So what do we say?’ Dampier asked.
‘We tell ’em who we are, sir,’ Rafferty indicated the crude notice Dampier had erected to disguise them. ‘Unità di Riparazione 64,’ he said. ‘That’s who we are, sir. So, I reckon we’d better start looking like one. A bit better notice, for a start, I’m thinkin’. Somethin’ a bit more professional. And a line underneath indicating light vehicles only, so there’ll be no nonsense about being asked to repair tanks.’
The nearby desert was full of small units supporting the fighting troops – workshops, mechanical, electrical and radio; supply dumps; petrol dumps; food dumps; and a little airfield with its old wreckage of Savoias destroyed at the end of 1940 and its new squadron of Fiats, which had been moved in for the present advance. There was every kind of unit to make an army function – all tucked away in the valleys between the dunes or anywhere they might get some shade, all operating individually, all drawing and cooking their own rations, all with their own discipline, all minding their own business and interfering with no one else’s.
In any army – the Italian army as well as the British army – units kept very much to themselves, whether they were regiments, brigades, divisions or merely companies or platoons. Every man lived within his own small outfit and beyond that within the larger family of his regiment, brigade or division. It didn’t matter whether they were artillery, infantry, supplies, maintenance and repairs, or whatever, and the fact that 64 Light Vehicle Repair Unit had been accepted as part of the Italian army was recognized at once, as they began to receive visits from Italian soldiers on the scrounge for food. At first Morton tried to discourage them but, as Dampier began to compile a long report headed ‘Italian troops, Morale of’, he was finally ordered to encourage them.
Wretchedly equipped in their baggy trousers, puttees, vast yellow boots and ill-fitting, board-stiff clothing that chafed the skin without offering much in the way of protection, the Italian soldiers had few comforts and fewer luxuries and were over the moon at the British rations captured at Sofi – chocolate, ham, cheese, tinned fish, the Three Threes Cigarettes instead of their own hated Nazionalis. But they were quiet men on the whole, frugal, disciplined and patient, with a deep sense of injustice, and it didn’t take Morton long to discover that they belonged mostly to the Longhi Brigade, so known from its commander, one Colonel Giacinto Longhi, whom they saw occasionally strutting about with visiting officials from the Fascist Party in Rome. In the manner of most Italian units, they bore in addition the more virile title of the Lupi di Longhi – Longhi’s Wolves – but it also didn’t take Morton long to learn that they’d run away so often all the other Italians called them the Lepri di Longhi – Longhi’s Hares.
Unlike the confident, sturdy men of the Alpini and the Bersaglieri, their favourite reading was Tradotta Libica, Libyan Troop Train, which was a soldiers’ magazine in which grievances were aired; and they lived only for what they called the Shopping Bag – the convoy that brought their rations, the few luxuries they were allowed and the red wine they drank from their mess tins. They were old hands for the most part who had little time for the politicians in Rome with their corruption and inefficiency, or for the authoritative and energetic generals who tried to ape the Germans with their clicking heels, salutes, medals and the passo romano, Mussolini’s version of the goose step. The new recruits, who had arrived to fill the gaps in their ranks, were even mere boys, badly trained, poor in spirit, lacking élan and initiative and with none of the soundness of the men who had been lost in Wavell’s advance in 1940/41; and their chief fear was of being caught in a brewed-up vehicle and becoming what they called ‘soldati fritti’. They were so concerned with their private woes they barely noticed the oddities that existed about No. 64 Light Vehicle Repair Unit.
‘An’ after all,’ Rafferty explained, ‘’twould be natural enough for a vehicle repair unit to be in Zuq.’
‘There are disadvantages,’ Morton pointed out. ‘Italians eat a lot of pasta. It’s something we’ll have to get used to.’
Rafferty smiled. ‘They also drink a lot of wine, boy,’ he said. ‘That’s something we’ll also have to get used to.’
Their first visitor not seeking food was Sottotenente Faiani. He arrived in his small, battered Fiat and claimed he’d come to make sure they had all they needed. It didn’t take Morton long to decide he was also more than a little interested in him personally.
‘I haven’t always been a rear stores officer,’ he pointed out. ‘I was a front-line man, count, like you. My company was almost wiped out trying to hold the British near Bardia during the winter. Have you been out long?’
‘As long as most people,’ Morton said brusquely.
Faiani smiled, not in the least put out by Morton’s lofty manner. ‘I was convinced you were shorter than I am,’ he said. ‘Strange that I had a totally different impression of you.’
‘You seem to have had a lot of strange impressions,’ Morton snapped.
As Faiani disappeared, Rafferty stared after him, his eyes narrow. ‘I
