The Sand Panthers Read online

  The regimental policeman – all gleaming brass, brilliant white-blancoed equipment, sparkling boots and crisp starched khaki – raised his swagger cane and snarled out of the side of his mouth. ‘Sod off you dirty Gippo wog – and get that poxy nag out of here before he pisses in front of the guardroom!’ The little Egyptian peddlar was unafraid. Indeed he moved closer to this lance-corporal on guard and held up the pictures he had concealed in his skinny brown claw.

  The sentry gasped and took in the first picture: dark skinned, middle-aged woman with a twenties hairdo doing something he had thought impossible with a yellow-toothed donkey. ‘You dirty Gippo-wog bugger!’ he exclaimed, not taking his eyes off the photos. ‘That’s all you filthy lot think on – dipping yer wick and half inching our rations.’ He waved his swagger cane at the grinning peddlar, his face crimson with righteous indignation. ‘Now be off with you, or I’ll have you inside the nick in double-quick time!’

  The Egyptian shot a furtive look to both sides. Urgently he whispered out of the corner of his mouth in perfect Upper Class English. ‘That’s exactly what I want you to do, Corporal.’ The MP’s mouth dropped open stupidly. ‘What did you say?’

  ‘You heard me, man! Get me inside and make it look as if you are arresting me for loitering. I must see Brigadier Young at once – and they have spies everywhere. Now move!’

  The sentry moved! Next instant a wailing, protesting peddlar was dragged into the barracks by the scruff of his skinny neck, leaving his loudly braying donkey behind him. Major Slaughter had done it again.

  * * *

  ‘Well, Slaughter?’ Brigadier Young barked. Above him the mechanical fan barely stirred the stiflingly hot air.

  ‘A total failure,’ Slaughter answered, removing his disguise. ‘The Jerries knew Haselden was coming. They wiped the floor with our poor chaps. I doubt if we’ll get a dozen of them back through the Sand Sea in the end.’

  ‘Treachery?’ Young, a white-haired, red-faced officer with a trim Regular Army moustache queried.

  Slaughter nodded slowly.

  ‘By whom – our people?’ the Brigadier rapped, leaning forward in anticipation.

  Slaughter took his time. Outside a harsh military voice was barking: ‘Now swing them arms there! ... Bags of swank! … and open them legs, you bunch of pregnant penguins – nothing will fall out, you know!’ ‘No sir. It was the Gippos. That crowd around Nasser and the rest of those young Gippo officers. They’ll go to any length to get us out of Egypt.’ Young bit his bottom lip.

  ‘They’ve got their eyes and ears everywhere. When our chaps from the SAS or the LRDG1 prepare to move out into the blue, there are Gippo mess waiters, the sanitary wallahs, the Gippo hawkers, all taking note of our every move and passing it on to the Nasser crowd.’

  ‘It’s damnable!’ Brigadier Young exploded, his face flushing angrily. ‘Why the devil don’t we sling the whole greasy bunch of them inside, once and for all? Skulking around here in the base area and betraying all those good men up there in the desert.’

  Slaughter shook his head slowly. ‘Afraid no-can-do, sir. Then we’d really set the cat among the pigeons. Even the Fat Boy’ – he meant the grossly overweight Egyptian king – ‘would have to forget about his whores and come out on the side of the young officers. We’d have the whole of the Delta up in arms and at the moment with this new chap General Montgomery preparing a fresh offensive up the blue, we can’t afford that kind of thing, sir.’

  Young sighed and looked up at the flaking white ceiling, as if seeking solace up there. ‘I suppose you’re right, Slaughter. You always are.’

  ‘Mostly, sir,’ Slaughter replied without a trace of irony. For eighteen years he had been in the political intelligence section of the Cairo High Commissioner’s office and he had lost his English sense of humour – if he had ever possessed one. In nearly two decade in Egypt, mixing with the Egyptians and the desert Arabs for months on end without ever speaking to another Englishman, he had adopted many Egyptian mannerisms, including taking everything completely seriously. ‘Once we have beaten the Hun in the desert and the Delta is no longer threatened, then the High Commissioner will act. He’ll put the lot of them behind bars where they belong. But at the moment, everything is on a knife edge. Only last week, the Fat Boy had the audacity to tell Lampson2 “When the war’s over, then for God’s sake put down the white man’s burden – and go”.’

  ‘I understand, Slaughter. All right, what can we do? I presume you are here for a reason.’

  ‘I am, sir.’ Slaughter hesitated a fraction of a second, as if he were finding it a little difficult to formulate what he had to say next. ‘Assuming, sir, that the situation in the Delta is on a knife edge, with Gippos ready to have a crack, at us any day now, what do you think it would take for them to make a move?’

  Young laughed coarsely. ‘A bloody miracle, Slaughter!’ he exclaimed. ‘You know better than I do what a bunch of cowards they are. When your back’s turned, all right, they might risk sticking a knife in it, but if you turn and face them–’ he shrugged. ‘They’re off with their tails between their skinny legs.’

  ‘Agreed, sir. But in this case I think we’ve got our backs to them. The troops are pretty thin on the ground down here with Montgomery preparing for his offensive in the desert, and – with all respect – I don’t think the staff wallahs at GHQ, Cairo would frighten them if it came to trouble.

  ‘Now, sir,’ Slaughter went on, ‘what if the Gippos receive a stiffening of Germans?’

  ‘Huns? But who and how?’

  ‘I don’t know about the “who” sir, but the “how” is not too difficult. Through the Sand Sea!’

  Young looked at him aghast. ‘But they’ve never tried it before,’ he stuttered. ‘I mean…’

  Slaughter looked at him coldly. ‘I’ve good reason to believe that Rommel is planning something of that sort, sir.’

  ‘How do you mean, Slaughter?’

  The English agent lowered his brown eyes almost demurely. ‘My boys, of course, sir.’

  ‘Of course,’ Young echoed, grateful to Slaughter that he did not have to look him in the eye at that particular moment. The Major had been in Egypt too long. He had taken up too many of the Wog vices, including that one. ‘But if your boys are correct in their estimate, what can we do? All I could give you to cover the exits from the Sand Sea is what is left of the SAS and LRDG.’ He shrugged. ‘Perhaps a couple of score men at the most.’

  ‘I’ll take them, sir – with thanks,’ Slaughter said hastily. ‘But I want more – I want the Horsemen of St George, lots of them.’

  ‘Horsemen of St George?’ the Brigadier queried. Slaughter laughed coldly. ‘That is what the desert Arabs call golden sovereigns. Sir, I want to call out the tribes. For every German they capture, I’ll promise them twenty Horsemen. It’s a small fortune for them.’

  The Brigadier shuddered in spite of the heat. ‘Call out the tribes,’ he exclaimed. ‘My God, you know what the desert Arabs do to a white man!’

  ‘I do! But it’s either that or the Germans will get through into the Delta.’

  The Brigadier sighed, and ringing the little bell on his desk, said, ‘You know, Slaughter, you’ve been too long in this damned country. It has corrupted you.’

  Slaughter’s dark brown eyes gleamed momentarily. ‘I expect it has, sir,’ he said calmly enough. ‘Now do I get the Horsemen of St George?’

  ‘You do, Slaughter, you do…’

  * * *

  Five minutes later an observer of the entrance to Alexandria’s Mustafa Barracks would have been treated to the sight of a burly sergeant-major sending a skinny little wog flying out of the gate, propelled by the gleaming toe of the NCO’s size eleven ammunition boot.

  The little wog glared malevolently up at him from the dust, but he said and did nothing, until the NCO had turned and stamped back into the barracks. Then he struggled to his feet, hawked, and spat defiantly onto the baking ground. Limping badly he struggled back to his waiting
donkey. With a grunt he slung his new burden over its back. The pathetic creature brayed in protest. The wog dug his nail-tipped goad into its hide and it moved forward, back into the desert, bearing with it the exact price of two hundred dead Germans.

  Notes

  1. Long-Range Desert Group.

  2. The British Minister to Cairo.

  FOUR

  Sergeant-Major Schulze, Assault Regiment Wotan’s senior NCO, cursed and thrust his peaked cap to the back of his shaven head, ‘What’s this? The feeding of the bloody five thousand?’

  He stared across at the hundreds of men milling around the soup kettles, waiting for their breakfast, while cooks, stripped to the waist, the sweat running off their naked arms into the food, tried to feed them. ‘How can I be expected to grub up my guts with that mob rushing the goulash cannon, eh?’

  Corporal Matz, Schulze’s crony, glanced up at the big blond ex-docker, a look of contempt on his wrinkled, leathery face. ‘You are the senior NCO in the senior regiment of the senior division of the SS, ain’t yer?’

  ‘Agreed, my horrible little wet dream,’ Schulze said.

  ‘Then what are you standing there for – like a big fart in a trance? You go automatically to the head of the queue. It’s your right. After all, we are the Wotan, you know.’ Matz jingled his mess tins in anticipation. ‘Well, what are we waiting for? Come on!’

  Brutally the two SS noncoms pushed their way through the disgruntled Afrikakorps men, crying ‘Make way for a naval officer!’ Here and there a soldier turned and began to protest, but their angry comments died on their cracked lips when they saw the black and white armbands of the Armed SS on the two NCOs’ sleeves. Not even the veterans of Rommel’s Afrikakorps wanted to tangle with the SS.

  The first cook looked up at them dully. ‘First canteen – nigger sweat; second – rations.’ Schulze accepted the steaming black ersatz coffee in his first canteen and soup in the other. Together he and Matz pushed their way through the sullen crowd and walked across the desert to a halftrack, its bogies almost half buried in drifting sand, a little outpost of blackness in that gleaming white. It offered shade, but no coolness.

  With a sigh, Schulze and Matz dropped to the burning ground. Schulze put down his canteens and pulled out a can of the British beer he had looted from Rommel’s supply truck the previous day. Taking his bayonet, he punched a hole in it, thrusting the can to his lips swiftly before the warm beer had a chance to spurt out.

  He took a few sips, then he dropped the can in disgust. ‘Bloody sand – it’s half full of sand,’ he snarled. ‘This desert! God knows why the Führer wants it! There’s sand in the food; sand in the coffee; fucking sand in everything. If there was any nooky in this damned desert, I wouldn’t be surprised if there was sand up there, as well!’

  ‘There ain’t, yer know,’ Matz said, greedily finishing the last of his soup.

  ‘Ain’t what, you asparagus Tarzan?’ Schulze asked morosely.

  ‘Sand up there,’ Matz replied easily. Schulze’s bottom lip trembled. ‘You mean…you mean,’ he breathed in awe, ‘that…that there’s that here?’

  Matz finished the last of the soup with a flourish and wiped his mouth with the back of his sleeve. ‘What?’

  ‘Tail, pussy, nooky, something to snake.’ He grabbed Matz’s jacket and pulled the little corporal to him eagerly. ‘THAT!’

  ‘Oh, that,’ Matz said casually. ‘Course there is.’ Schulze released his hold and breathed out hard, a sudden gleam in his eyes. He crooked his big forefinger at Matz and said: ‘Give!’

  ‘Down by the Quay near the cranes.’

  ‘And you mean you didn’t tell your old pal, Matzi!’

  ‘Officers only,’ Matz answered and finished the last of the beer.

  ‘Officers,’ Schulze barked contemptuously, ‘I’ve shat ’em!’ His blue eyes sparkled. ‘All that good Tommy bully beef yesterday really put me on. It put so much lead in my pencil, I don’t know who to write to first!’

  ‘Whores from spaghetti-land. Last month the Tommies dropped a bomb on the place and that little garden dwarf of a king of theirs awarded the ones wounded a medal for bravery. Our officers who were killed were listed as K.I.A.1’

  ‘What a way to go – knocked off on the job!’ The big Sergeant-Major rose hastily to his feet. ‘Well,’ he demanded, ‘what are you sitting there for, growing corns on your ass. Let’s go. I’m limping already, just thinking about it…’

  * * *

  Von Dodenburg, smoking his post-breakfast cigar, smiled and watched the two NCOs plodding away through the thick sand to the coast, telling himself that it would take all their celebrated ingenuity to get them into the brothel, which was reserved for ‘golden pheasants’ and staff officers over the rank of major. Then he dismissed the two NCOs from his thoughts, and grinding out the cigar, walked to the operations tent for his first meeting of the day.

  Captain Professor Dr Hans Reichert was already waiting for him inside. The elderly Captain who rose to salute von Dodenburg seemed as cool as a spring day despite the intense heat. There was not a trace of perspiration on his face. ‘The man must have ice-water in his veins,’ von Dodenburg told himself a little angrily as he motioned the Captain to a seat.

  ‘I’ve been told by Field-Marshal Rommel that you will brief me on the difficulties of the operation, Captain…er…Professor Reichert?’ he said.

  Reichert, who had once been the University of Heidelberg’s leading Egyptologist, cleared his throat importantly, as if he were now about to deliver a lecture. ‘That is so, I believe, Major.’

  ‘I know, Reichert,’ von Dodenburg snapped, irritated by the heat and the man’s academic manner. All the same he knew that he had spent half a lifetime in the desert and was the Afrikakorps’ foremost expert on it. He needed his assistance badly. ‘Now this is the problem. I have been ordered to take my Mark IV tanks and my halftracks through the Sand Sea into Egypt. Ten tanks, ten halftracks and 150 men. Now what am I going to be faced with?’

  Again the ex-Professor cleared his throat. ‘There are many problems,’ he said carefully. ‘Very many.’

  ‘All right, tell me them,’ von Dodenburg snapped. ‘Come on get on with it!’

  Reichert’s face flushed like that of a maiden lady who had just felt a man’s hand thrust up her skirt. ‘There is the question of navigation for example,’ he began. ‘The Sand Sea is featureless – rather like the Luneburg Heath with no outcrops of rock. You’ll have to use the sun compass.’

  ‘Sun compass?’ von Dodenburg questioned.

  ‘It is a very simple way of navigating. It depends upon knowing the exact sun time. From this we can determine the sun’s bearing throughout the day. I have personally always found it easier to remember that at midday, when the sun is due south, the shadow falls due north. Hence the direction of movement at right angles to the shadow will obviously be either due east or west. Once one has absorbed that fact, one needs only to note the distance one has travelled to determine to within a few hundred metres one’s position in relation to the starting point. Is that clear, Major?’

  Reichert did not wait for the Major’s response, but carried on as if he had reached a particularly important point in one of his Hauptseminars and did not want to be stopped by some foolish question. ‘Then there is the problem of driving. Once the sand has dried after dawn, one finds that each vehicle is followed by a huge plume of sand which not only gives one’s position away for kilometres, but also–’

  Major von Dodenburg held up his hand. ‘Hold it, hold it, Professor!’ he commanded. ‘Let me ask you one question – and one question only. Do you think we can make it?’

  ‘From Cufra, our last outpost in the desert, you will have to cover virtually one thousand kilometres of uncharted desert with one hundred and fifty men who are not yet acclimatized, plus twenty heavy vehicles which will eat up tremendous amounts of fuel and water – where there is not one solitary well.’ Reichert paused and stared up at the young officer. ‘With lu
ck, you’ll make it, Major,’ he concluded.

  ‘Excellent,’ von Dodenburg exclaimed. ‘And I am especially glad. For your sake, Professor.’

  ‘My sake?’

  ‘Yes, my dear sir.’ Major von Dodenburg grinned at the other man’s sudden bewilderment. ‘Because you are coming with us, as our guide and mentor.’

  ‘Oh, my goodness!’ Professor Dr Hans Reichert slumped weakly in his chair. ‘Oh my goodness me!’

  Von Dodenburg rose to his feet and reached for his cap. ‘All right then, Prof,’ he snapped, ‘let’s get our fingers out. We’ve got a lot to do today.’ Briskly he strode out into the desert’s sun burning white brilliance. Wotan had exactly forty-eight hours left before it moved out.

  Note

  1. Killed-in-Action.

  FIVE

  The next forty-eight hours flew by. There were a hundred and one problems for von Dodenburg to solve. In the oven-hot air, the half-naked Wotan men sweated over the vehicles, preparing them for the long trek into the unknown desert. The blond Major, his face already burnt a brick-red by the sun, was here, there and everywhere, knowing that to relax for an instant would be fatal.

  He strode from crew to crew, checking them and their vehicles and coming to loathe the burning-red ball of the sun, which beat down upon them so relentlessly. He thought longingly of the cool French coast which they had just left for these burnished sands and stifling opaque haze, which shimmered blindingly.

  On the first day, von Dodenburg, Schulze, and Captain Reichert concentrated on checking that the tanks and halftracks were correctly fuelled up and armed. Forcing himself to walk slowly, von Dodenburg inspected the outside of each vehicle in that stifling heat, and then clambered inside the red-hot metal boxes to check the mass of dials, the speedometer, the revolution counter, the pressure gauges, the cannon-firing mechanism.