Unofficial History by William Slim

Author:William Slim
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781783830428
Publisher: Pen & Sword Books
Published: 2013-08-20T16:00:00+00:00

VII

IT PAYS TO BE BOLD

By the evening of the 1st July the foremost troops were under shell fire from Deir-ez-zor. General Slim insisted on two combined attacks—one frontal, one very wide round the left flank. These were made on the morning of the 3rd July and succeeded at once. Nine guns and about one hundred prisoners were taken which suggests that many of the garrison had melted away.

British Official History: Mediterranean and Middle East, Vol. II

I BUMPED my head as I ducked clumsily out of the last armoured car of the line, stepped back a little, and had a look at it. It was clumsy, too. A high, ugly machine with, perched on top of it, a turret like an old fashioned bee-hive from which poked a Vickers machine-gun, its sole armament. I noted that it did not carry any anti-aircraft weapon—a deficiency about which, for personal reasons, I held strong views—and that its large wheels had tyres of a size used by no modern vehicle. The body of the car was twenty years old; its engine five. Both hadledhard lives. Now, in the hot early summer in 1941 in Iraq, an armoured car regiment, equipped with these museum pieces, had joined my Indian division. I had clamoured for armour and here it was—of a sort.

Not over-impressed by the vehicle, I shifted my gaze to the crew, drawn up beside it. They were better worth looking at. Lean, hawk-nosed Pathan cavalrymen, in their khaki overalls, web pistol-belts and black berets; even stiffly at attention, they gave an impression of lithe energy. As I walked down the short line I was conscious that their keen eyes were inspecting their new general at least as thoroughly as he was inspecting them. When I turned to the British officer commanding the regiment, a stocky major who looked—and as I later discovered was—cheerfully efficient, I could, whatever I might think of his cars, compliment him on his men.

Beside him stood his risaldar-major, the senior Indian officer of the regiment, a man in his middle forties, of about the same height as the major but slighter. His face, little darker than the sunburnt Englishman’s, was rosy-tinged through the brown, like a good russet apple. Except for his darker eyes and neat, grizzled beard, he might have been one of the West Country farmers of my youth. He looked as fit and as competent as his commanding officer, but not nearly as cheerful. Indeed, he exuded gloom. I asked him how he liked Iraq.

‘A bad country, sahib,’ he answered. ‘Bad country, bad people and a bad war—no fighting!’

The major laughed.

‘The risaldar-major,’ he explained, ‘thought we were bound for the Western Desert. He feels that here we are in a back-water. He’s rather a blood-for-breakfast sort of chap.’

‘Well, risaldar-major sahib,’ I said. ‘We haven’t had much fighting up to now, but I promise you a proper fight one day.’

‘If it is the will of God,’ he answered politely enough, but he sounded as if he doubted both the Almighty’s interest and my ability.

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