Alamein to Zem Zem by Keith Douglas

Author:Keith Douglas [Douglas, Keith]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780571315468
Publisher: Faber & Faber
Published: 2014-04-24T00:00:00+00:00

I wondered how this specious treatment of awkward situations would satisfy his constituents after the war, and if he would be able to satisfy them with a couple of stock quotations. When Raoul had got into trouble once, Piccadilly Jim had used the same one (as from Napoleon) on him. As a subaltern, I had to be satisfied. In any case, the letter dispelled my pique: it amused me (and I knew it had amused Piccadilly Jim to write it). Besides, it was as near an apology as he would go.

From our new position we could see the white houses of Mersa Brega on the skyline north-west of us. In front of us lay a series of false crests, and far away, to the south-west, the long Wadi up which the Germans had advanced and beaten back the first British advance. We went out on reconnaissance in this area with two troops of the Crusader squadron. Advancing along the southern lip of the valley I came to a partially burnt-out Humber Armoured Car and beside it the grave, with a neat painted cross, of a Royal Dragoons sergeant-major. The tinned rations in the car ration boxes were a little blackened, but made a welcome addition to our stock. A tin of treacle, which had been well heated, contained a delicious black toffee-like substance. On the northern rim of the valley, at our end of it, a standing patrol of Armoured Cars watched the Italian forward positions across the plateau to the west. The subaltern officer in charge, a boy whose red-brown, peeling face was covered with sores and slimy ointment, made us crawl up to his observation position, where he had a long telescope mounted on little tees of sand, like the telescopes through which one could look for a penny at English seaside resorts. In the dial appeared figures moving about and occasional smears of light sand where there were freshly dug positions from which the soil had not been properly cleared away.

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