Killing Rommel by Steven Pressfield

Author:Steven Pressfield
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi, pdf
ISBN: 9780385525398
Publisher: Crown Publishing Group
Published: 2008-04-20T16:00:00+00:00

18

IT TAKES FORTY-EIGHT hours, travelling by night and lying up by day, to reach the rallying point at Bir el Ensor, Sore Thumb. We have barely closed an eye the entire way.

Two miles into the desert, fleeing the enemy, Te Aroha IV’s engine begins pouring smoke. Five hours of daylight remain; we can see the dust of Axis armoured cars several miles behind us and hear aircraft engines east and west, searching for us and the others. Luck stays with us. The enemy, it seems, have been tardy in realising that the raid was truck-borne as well as from the air. Our vehicles, barrelling across the camp, were mistaken by the Germans for their own, evading the planes. By the time they reckon what’s what, we’ve got a start on them. At nightfall, our first halt to draw breath, Punch discovers a heavy-calibre rip through the sump and a crack in the block you can stick your little finger into. “I told you,” says Punch. “She’s been running on two cylinders for twenty miles.”

The truck pushes on, leaking and overheating. Standage groans in the back. His wounds are in both legs. The right is mostly burns and abrasions, but the left has been nearly severed at the knee; the bottom half is bound to the top only by strips of bloody gristle, for which trauma we can do nothing except bind the mess as tightly as we can and shoot Standage full of morphia. Punch and Collie have cleared a space for him among spare wheels and petrol tins and set him on our combined bedding, which, we discover when we unbundle it, has been set alight by tracer fire and charred half to rags. None the less we pack this under and round Standage, trying to make him as comfortable as possible. His only complaint is the cold. Funny, when a man is hit, you call him by his nickname. Standage has become “Stan” and now “Standy.” Collie donates his syrette of morphia though he needs it badly for his own burns. I contribute mine too. Standage’s courage humbles us. Collie himself is burnt across his back and neck and the right side of his face. His beard has been singed crisp. The truck gasps and wheezes across the plain. The radiator keeps boiling over. Its overflow tank has been holed and continues to drain despite patch after patch. We refill using the “honey jar” of our week’s urine, saved for just such an emergency. I’m worried about Collie going into shock. He deflects my concern. “Plenty of time,” he says, “to fag out tomorrow.”

When the engine becomes too hot to run, we shut down in neutral and push. The labour strains us nearly to our limit, but we have no other option. If we abandon the truck, we’ll have to carry on our backs water, food, ammunition and guns, not to mention Standage, on whom the passage will be a lot easier reclining on blankets than carried in a litter.

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