To War with Whitaker by Hermione Ranfurly

Author:Hermione Ranfurly
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Pan Macmillan

8. Westward Ho

13 January 1944 – Cairo

We have said goodbye to all our friends in Cairo, the Sofragis, baggage men, our Italian dressmaker and her fat pug, the King of Greece in his villa on the Nile, etc. Daphne56 and I are packed and ready to go to Algiers. For years I have lived close to the Desert but never seen it. Tomorrow I shall see the stage of all those adventures, tragedies, retreats, sieges and victories. The land where all those people I knew, and listened to, lived and fought and perhaps died.

14 January 1944

It was cold on the aerodrome this morning. We looked a comic party: Daphne in her white sheepskin coat with a bundle of coathangers under her arm; Arthur Forbes, round as the Michelin tyre man in two overcoats, carrying a couple of dead turkeys; Patrick Wilson, muffled to the ears and already green with anticipation of flying; myself in my new battle-dress,57 holding Coco in his cage. Corporal Robins and Sergeant Clark, the chef, handed a vast assortment of luggage into the Dakota while Achmed, the General’s Sudanese servant, explained with immense dignity to the American crew, ‘Me no Sambo. Me Achmed.’ When Mark and George Davy arrived we said goodbye to the drivers who were not coming with us, took airsick pills and flew down the Delta.

Everyone craned at the windows. Coco wandered about my chair, grumbling to himself. Soon we were over the Western Desert, not far from Alamein. I saw old tanks and trucks and scrap strewn about. Wheel tracks were so distinct the battle might have been yesterday. I saw Halfaya Pass and the railway which only goes to Mersa Matruh; scrub and wadis; black blobs of burnt vehicles; the road to Tripoli. Tobruk looked like a village. Wrecks in the harbour showed clearly through the green water . . .

The land below seemed drab and flat as the map on my knees, yet all day I stared out of the window. Old stories and phrases darted through my mind. Each place had some special significance for me. ‘The noise and the heat of the battle at Alamein are terrific. It cannot last much longer.’

‘These siege operations around Bardia are getting monotonous. We are longing to be on the move again.’

‘In Tobruk we are all cheerful and we shall fight to the last man. You would be amused if you could see the assortment of guns we are using.’

‘For two days we searched for the Generals. There is a rough track south of Derna and we think they were ambushed there. My men blew up the road in the early morning.’

‘The garden at Barce is full of flowers. We found a little tame gazelle and a visitors’ book signed by Graziani, Balbo and all our Generals.’

‘David Stirling is operating far behind the enemy lines. They use the Long Range Desert Group as Carter Paterson.’

‘It appeared to me that a figure ran for about thirty yards. Tracer was all around him. He dropped down .

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