War's Nomads by Frederick Grice Colin Clarke Gillian Clarke

Author:Frederick Grice, Colin Clarke, Gillian Clarke [Frederick Grice, Colin Clarke, Gillian Clarke]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Nonfiction, History, Africa, Military, World War II, Biography & Memoir, Historical
ISBN: 9781612002897
Publisher: Casemate Publishers (Ignition)
Published: 2015-03-19T04:00:00+00:00

The second day, feeling after further enquiries, as surely stalemated as the armies in front of me, I slept again in the transit camp. On the third day, weary with sitting and waiting for information which never came, I was reduced to contemplating returning to Cairo as best I could, beaten and disgraced, when a lucky meeting with an officer enlightened me. Thanks to him, I was at last put on my way. By that time, as I know now, the last German attack was petering out, and the Alamein box where 606 was sited, was relieved. While the fate of Alexandria and the Nile was being fought out, I had been sitting like a tramp on the roadside, concerned, not with the destiny of nations, but with my next meal, my next drink, my next cigarette and my next bed.

It was late in the afternoon of 4 September, when, after a long ride along the coast road, past innumerable alarming signs – those wayside pulpits of the desert – (‘Do you know what to do if you are ambushed?’) and over two famous tracks, the Bombay and the Sidney Roads, that I at last reached my station.

The nature of the countryside west of Alex had by no means charmed me. The first view of my station filled me with foreboding, and had I not been dulled by a long sea journey and sordid weeks in transit camps, and more au fait with the seriousness of the Alamein position, I should have been even more alarmed. Before me, as I jumped off the last friendly gharry,5 rose a low ridge of bare rocky land (Fig. 6),6 drifted over in places with soft glittering sand, and littered with sharpsided grey and white stones. From this backbone of rock the ground fell away into shallow wadis,7 their sides sparsely covered with twisted camel thorn; and prominent on its flattish top and very lonely against the waste of sand, stood a big drab Crossley waggon, with a flight of thick steps leading from the tail-board and dirty fly netting hanging loosely from the roof. Nearby was an array of disused petrol tins built into a three-sided open-air cookhouse, and beyond it, on a drift of soft sand, were four bivouac tents, irregularly dispersed. As I walked over to the lorry, a cloud of flies rose from a dirty porridge stick that lay on the ground. Another swarm buzzed assiduously over a stain in the sand where dirty water had been thrown. The loneliness, poverty and squalor made my heart sink.

A steel-helmeted sergeant came down the steps to meet me.

‘I’m a new operator for you, Sarge,’ I said.

‘Well, that’s the first I’ve heard of you,’ he replied, ‘but make yourself at home.’

‘Where should I put my kit?’ I asked.

‘Just where it is, mate, on the deck. That’s about the only place for it at the moment. Got a bivvy?’

‘No.’

‘My God – but don’t worry. We’ll fix something up. Come and have some dinner.’

I was hungry and ate with relish.

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