Tobruk Commando by Landsborough Gordon;

Author:Landsborough, Gordon;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: HISTORY / Europe / Great Britain
ISBN: 4447603
Publisher: Pen & Sword Books Limited
Published: 2015-11-19T00:00:00+00:00

XV

ACTING-LEADING WREN Eva Porter knew there was something in the wind the moment she reported for duty in the Signals Distributing Office, H.Q,. Alexandria, on September 13. As she took her place behind her typewriter she looked around.

The room was unusually crowded with officers. What surprised her was the Army ‘brass’ there—unusual to see Army officers in that particular office. There was something of an air of tension about the officers, too, and experienced as she now was, the tall, dark Wren from Grimsby knew there was a hazardous operation pending.

But she had her own problems—a boy in the Coventry and another in the Coding Room. Life could be hell for a poor Wren unable to make up her mind, she was thinking, slipping a stencil into her machine and beginning to tap out a message handed across by the Leading Hand of the Watch.

Then as the clock hands moved into the early hours of of the morning of the 14th, Acting-Leading Wren Eva Porter forgot her own problems. The excitement was growing hourly. Officers kept dashing into the room demanding to know if certain signals had been received. Others, including the brass, just hovered around and smoked and talked in desultory fashion, to be galvanized only when a message came through for stencilling and eventual distribution.

Their eyes were on the clock. They were watching the hands crawl round. Crawl? By half-past one they were beginning to think the hands were racing.

For they knew what Eva Porter did not know. That if no success signal was received from Colonel Haselden by two in the morning, the raid would be cancelled and the ships brought home.

Two o’clock…. The minute hand began to crawl towards the hour. Quarter to two and no message. Ten minutes to … five to two. Four minutes to go. The cancellation message was all ready. Three minutes … two minutes …

At one minute to two the Leading Hand gave a signal to the Wren for typing. It consisted of one word. She began to tap it out in the prescribed way—N-I-G-G-E-R.

The officers were suddenly crowding around, suddenly jubilant. There was noise and excitement in the room, and officers grabbed their own copies of the signal as it was run off and dashed away with them.

‘Nigger’. The codeword meaning success for Haselden—the bridgehead at Sciausc was now in British hands and the M.T.B.s could go in with their troops.

It had arrived with one minute to spare.

Tom Langton fired the success signal along the coast east of Sciausc Bay. It was late, just after one-fifteen, but in time, they were all sure. They were not to know of the delays taken in enciphering, transmission and deciphering of the message which had almost caused it to be too late at Alexandria.

Away on the darkened east-coastline, too, Major Campbell and his men were not to know of the jubilation in Haselden’s H.Q. when someone first spotted their success signal—two green Verey lights simultaneously. The old exhilaration of victory again swept over the little knot of men at sight of those soaring lights.

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