Read Online Take or Destroy! by John Harris - Free Book Online Page B

attack?’ he asked.
    Nietzche shrugged. ‘This time they seem to think they need to.’
    ‘What about tank men?’
    ‘Zohler sent down fifteen and an officer. All convalescents!’
    ‘Himmelherrgott!’ Hochstatter gestured wearily. ‘Have we nothing but the halt, the blind and the lame? I just hope that the British are having the same difficulties we are.’
     
    As it so happened, they were - as the explosive mixture crammed into the tented camp at Gott el Scouab indicated.
    At that precise moment in time, the camp was chiefly notable for the sullen atmosphere that hung over it. Most of its inhabitants were moving about with frowning faces and saying very little. Hockold watched them from the doorway of his headquarters, a drab wooden hut which, following a raid by the Luftwaffe in July, didn’t even stand erect but leaned at an angle. Amos and Watson were behind him, Amos sitting at the desk working at a training programme Murdoch had written out, Watson staring at the tent lists and wondering if the idea of separating everyone from his friends had been a good one.
    When he’d first arrived in Egypt, like everybody else who’d left England in the dark days of 1940, he’d never expected to go home again because he’d thought the war would go on for ever.
    It had made the pain of being separated from his wife all the worse and for a long time he’d just accepted that he must be grateful simply for having known her. Now, however, with the old piratical days of 1940 and 1941 gone, the desert filling up with armed men, and the certainty growing that this time they really were going to knock the enemy out of Africa, the longing to go home had become an agony and he was impatient to finish the job.
    ‘Think it’ll work?’ he asked.
    Amos lifted his head. ‘It’ll work,’ he said confidently. ‘By tonight they’ll be swopping fags.’
    At that moment they were swopping nothing but uncomplimentary remarks about their new commanding officer.
    ‘Fuddy bugger, isd’t ‘e?’ Private Waterhouse was yelling, a gormless, untroubled grin on his face. ‘Proper cobedian. Let t’ battle commence, eh? What a lot o’ drippingg. It makes me fair roll od the bloody groud.’
    On the whole they were in complete agreement. Gott el Scouab was clearly a bigger hell-hole than No. 2 Transit and the vastness around was oppressive, limitless and awful. Sand seeped into everything, a fair proportion filling their socks, while the brooding sun stuck their shirts to their backs with a board-like consistency and made their necks raw with the gritty dust.
    ‘If this is the commandos,’ Sugarwhite observed, ‘we should have joined the chain gang.’
    They were all set for a good grumble, but Murdoch didn’t give them that long and sent the sergeants and corporals round the tents to chase them out. They came unwillingly because they were still feeling they’d been cheated, and Murdoch stared contemptuously at them as they turned up in dribs and drabs.
    ‘When I say I want y’on parade,’ he said in his quiet low voice, ‘I mean I want y’on parade - now!’ His voice remained quiet but there was something deadly in it now that made them uneasy. ‘I’m a commando. You want to be commandos. Well, the fairst thing you’d better learn is discipline -- without question. Contrary to what Errol Flynn would have you believe, toughness isnae bashing another chap’s head in. Toughness is keeping on going when everybody else has stopped. And that depends on stamina, temperament, will - and discipline. Well, we cannae change your characters or make you stronger than you were born. But we can give you discipline.’
    He paused and the yellow gaze flickered across their faces as what he’d said sank in. ‘I was in Abyssinia and Spain,’ he went on. ‘So I ken what I’m talking about. Yon Abyssinians and yon Spanish were brave enough but they didnae savvy much aboot discipline and it was that that did for ‘em. With a bit o’