Summary: Will the Rats win against a ruthless German, Maj. Gunther Kurst, and save the town of Biddah?
Category: The Rat Patrol
Genre: World War II
Rating: G
Word Count: 14,192
Chapter 1 Aerial Attack
A sound of unholy terror. Jericho trumpets, mounted on the wheel gear, screamed like banshees as the lone Stuka swooped low, strafing the American convoy as it slowly moved from the coast to join an infantry battalion in the Jarraq valley. There, in the green wadis of the valley, Allied forces were in a stand-off with mixed German and Italian divisions. The trucks carried supplies, fresh troops and an arsenal of ammo and weapons for the besieged Allies. Now, if only they could get through!
The dive bomber, a scout plane, dropped a single bomb, which missed the vehicles in the convoy and hit the desert. After sending up a cloud of obscuring, blowing sand, the Stuka flew off.
Soon after, a squadron of four additional Stukas and a trio of Me 109 fighters appeared overhead and attacked the column. The Allies’ .30 caliber anti-aircraft guns, mounted on half-tracks, opened fire. Troops, firing from behind their vehicles, watched two of the Stukas twirl out of the sky and hit the sand and rocks with resounding thuds, blowing up in seconds. Those pilots and rear gunners never got out.
A herdsman shouted, but his foolhardy herd of goats decided to run out of a small wadi, or canyon, at the same time the first Stuka returned to make another strafing run. As bullets from its machine guns blew up the sand and struck the unoffending animals, bleats of dying goats caused one man to run to the top of the hill and fire into them, putting them all to rest.
While the convoy continued its strange dance of death with the planes in the sky, both sides losing men and machines, two military-green, battle-scarred jeeps flew up and over a dune, one behind the other. Their skillful drivers slipped into the fight like a hand in glove, while the two men at the fifties, both sergeants, swung the barrels up and fired short bursts at the flying squadron.
Dashing about on the sands, the jeeps soon separated, giving each the most effective field of fire, without one overlapping the other. Their .50 cal. guns put paid to the hopes of enemy pilots and gunners alike to return to base that afternoon.
One man, in a black beret and goggles, pumped his fist as a Me 109 took a hit to its fuel tank and simply fell out of the sky, some of its crew scrambling to flee the flaming wreckage. In a short half-minute, the entire plane exploded in a bright ball, adding some colorful fireworks to the proceedings.
Hoping his gunner held on, Tully swung his jeep sharply out of the reach of burning shrapnel descending to earth from the fragmented plane, but Moffitt caught some of it on his jacket sleeve and winced as it burned through to his arm.
Many more bullets later, the planes were on the losing side. The last, a Stuka, full of .30 and .50 caliber holes, limped off to begin its flight back to base, sputtering and sending up a plume of smoke from its single engine. Hundreds of plane parts, along with a supply truck or two and a destroyed half-track, most of it still smoking, littered the desert floor when the aerial bombardment came to an end. Men of both armies lay dead amidst the debris.
But the battlefield was left to the Allies.
Descending from the jeeps, the Rat Patrol jumped in to help with the wounded, Allied as well as German, loading them onto what remained of the troop trucks.
“Good shootin’, Moffitt!” cried Troy, clapping him on the back after the last of the wounded and the bodies of the dead, including German, had been loaded up. Then he looked at Moffitt’s arm.
“Hitch! Get the medical kit,” he called, sitting the Englishman down on the sand while Tully uncapped a canteen he pulled out of his jeep. Letting Moffitt take a well-earned sip, he swigged down a few ounces himself and then passed the canteen to Troy who took it and put it to his lips.
Running up from the second jeep, Hitch knelt down, opened the hinged case and pulled out a sulfa packet. He tore it open with his teeth and liberally sprinkled it on Moffitt’s upper arm where he’d been burned by the Messerschmitt’s flying debris. Carefully tearing his jacket and shirt sleeve, he unrolled a bandage and laid it on, gently re-rolling it around the wound.
“You’re very professional, Hitch,” said Moffitt. “Ever consider joining the medical corps?”
“Ah, Doc, you taught us both how to bandage wounds last week, remember?”
“Then you—both of you, Tully—have passed my class with flying colors!” He couldn’t help wincing when he said it.
Struggling even with Hitch’s help to stand, Moffitt swayed a little and reached out to grasp his beret from Tully, who was brushing it off for him. Clapping it on his head at a fairly dizzy angle, an angle that matched his own giddiness, he let Tully lead him to the jeep. Seated next to the wounded man, Tully reached up with a ‘tsk, tsk’ and straightened it for him.
Troy and Hitch had already gone off with the rest of their medical supplies back to their jeep. Starting it up, they drove up to the captain in charge of the convoy, a man named Yates, as he was about to enter one of the three remaining half-tracks. The fourth, bombed by a Stuka, now sat belching smoke from its engine.
“We’ll go in to Biddah with you, as escort, unless you’ve got other plans, sir?” asked Troy, descending from the jeep and walking up to the half-track before the captain got in its passenger seat.
“We welcome your help, Sergeant. Your men were God-sends today. It was only Providence who brought you to us.” Here, he winked. “And I’m not a religious man!”
Troy laughed, showing that bright smile of his, while Hitch, red-faced and red kepi-topped, grinned broadly, almost swallowing his gum. He didn’t blow his next bubble until they were out of the captain’s presence. With a bit of a heavy heart, he turned once and regarded the devastated battleground, huge land vehicles having been pitted against Stukas and Messerschmitts. As a child, he had read of dinosaurs roaming the earth. Now, he had met them.
He turned back just as Troy said, “Let’s shake it! The convoy’s ready to move.”
Both men, sergeant and private, loped back to their jeep and climbed aboard, taking the lead again as when they had first joined the fight. Troy threw out a question to Moffitt to see if he was okay, received a nod, and then reached up to grab the barrel of the fifty mounted behind him. He held on as Hitch put the jeep in gear again and started towards Biddah. The ten or so vehicles left in the American convoy also began to rumble to life. Soon it was a long, thick-bodied snake wiggling across the desert, following an old Arab road as it made its way towards the lush Jarraq valley.
The lone Junkers Ju 87 slid onto the concrete runway at the Luftwaffe base at Wadi Qamas, giving up a sigh as its dead engine finally petered out. The pilot and his gunner cum radio operator, their legs stiff as boards, pulled it together and forced themselves out of the plane. Lt. Rudi Kraus, his side bleeding, knelt on the runway for a few minutes, still reeling from the shock of battle, while his gunner waited close by. Several hands helped them into the compound of sandbags that had been erected for the base’s protection.
Debriefing was slow, tedious. A Major Gunther Kurst, an army major attached to the Luftwaffe base, conducted it. In charge of ground operations, he oversaw the tanks, armored cars, half-tracks and their towed 88mm flak guns, and any other vehicle of German military ingenuity wearing the palm tree and swastika emblem. With these, he hoped to crush any and all resistance from the small Allied command posts in the region.
“Those Desert Rats showed up,” said Rudi Kraus. Mustached, dark-haired, green-eyed, Kraus repressed a shudder. He recalled the .50 caliber rounds from the jeeps’ Browning M2s, or Ma Deuces. He had just dropped the last of his three bombs on one of the half-tracks. It exploded, propelling men out of the vehicle and into the sand, then came one of the jeeps, driven by a maniac in a red cap, its gunner firing steady bursts at his Stuka. He hit it several times even as Kraus dipped away and flew off. “Just two jeeps. Shot down a Messerschmitt. I was lucky.”
When he circled back again, flying up over the stony crest of a hill, he saw that he was now alone in the sky. All of the rest of the squadron—Stukas and Messerschmitts—had been shot down by the half-tracks and jeep guns. He put aside all thoughts of continuing the battle so he could return to base and make his report. Losing his plane wouldn’t have served the Third Reich as much as reporting on what he had experienced.
Kraus rubbed his eyes and then his lower face. He was tired. Shepherding that shot-up hunk of metal that had been his plane, a whole plane just that morning, all the way back to base had been as grueling as facing the base commander and Major Kurst, in order to report on all of the losses and failures, including his own.
“Why didn’t you go after the jeeps?” said Major Kurst. “Surely, two jeeps should have been easy to take out.”
“They’re a menace, sir. Came over the dune to the west of us and hit us before we knew what was happening. We lost a lot of good crews today.”
“But they had to be easy targets!” Kurst pointed out.
“You don’t know them, sir,” said Kraus, breathlessly, rubbing his side where a bullet had grazed him through the metal wall of the cockpit. “When I looked for them, they had disappeared on a gust of wind, as if they’d never been there. It would’ve have been hard to catch them, sir. They’re that fast.”
“Where was the convoy heading?” asked the Luftwaffe base commander, Oberstleutnant Fritz Bauer.
“East by southeast, towards the Jarraq valley in all likelihood to resupply the troops there, sir.”
“That area is as deadly as a pit of vipers!” cried Major Kurst. “We’ve gained nothing at all in that sector, the Allies are that strong.”
“What do you propose to do?” asked Bauer.
“I’ll take a convoy to the valley, sir,” Kurst said. “The Americans have a command post set up there. In Biddah. It’d be wise to destroy it before it turns into a full-fledged base.”
“I agree,” said Lt. Col. Bauer. “It’s time to break the stalemate in that area. I give you leave, Major Kurst, to do just that. Take as big a convoy as you’ll need. Report back after you’ve destroyed the post. Oh, not to forget. Be on the lookout for the jeep unit involved in today’s clash.”
Kurst was already disposing in his mind the number and order of the vehicles he intended to take to Biddah the next day, but since his knife-sharp Teutonic brain could run efficiently on two tracks at the same time, he spoke up.
“I believe they go by the name of the Rat Patrol, sir, at least this unit does.” He laughed. “Wish me luck in finding them. The base commander in al-Qarah, Captain Hans Dietrich, a good man in a fight, sir, has had his share of unpleasant run-ins with them, to his cost.”
“It’s almost been a deal-breaker for his career,” said Bauer in some heat. “I could bring this Dietrich here, unless you know them by sight?”
“Of course, sir, I’ve been briefed on their faces. There’s a bounty on each of their heads, too—that’ll help with the Arabs.”
“I wonder why they got out of Dietrich’s sector,” Bauer added. “Could it be they were acting as escorts for the convoy?”
“May I say, sir,” said Lt. Kraus, a bit out of his element in conversing with these senior officers, “if they weren’t before, they most surely are now.”
“Well, sir, Kraus, I have a busy afternoon ahead of me.” Kurst slapped his leg, stood up and made a slight bow to Bauer. “If I may have your permission to take my leave?”
Oberstleutnant Bauer gave him a half-salute, half-wave as he sat at his desk wondering how a jeep could bring down a Messerschmitt. Then he remembered the fifty on each jeep. Not a pleasant caliber to deal with. He’d heard about the men, too. Two super-quick drivers who had all of the desert as their Rennbahn, or racetrack, and two clever, intrepid sergeants manning the fifties. It was a wonder that Lt. Rudi Kraus, Stuka pilot, made it out of that battle above the sands with his hair intact.
Off in the distance, artillery thundered, but the Rat Patrol and its supply convoy were not in immediate danger. Entering the small town of Biddah after passing through the contested Jarraq valley—surprisingly unmolested—the trucks pulled up to the base supply hut to unload the ammo, medical supplies and foodstuffs.
Jim Yates, the American captain in charge of the convoy, along with Sgts. Troy and Moffitt, paid their respects to Captain Hugo Travers of the 1st Infantry Division, base commander. The wounded, including the Germans, were taken to the infirmary, located in the same HQ building as Travers’ office. Tully and Hitch took the jeeps to the motor pool to service them. After the roughin’ up they got in the aerial attack, there was a lot of work to do to bring them back up to par.
Tully especially frowned at the bullet holes in his jeep.
Hitch ran his hand over some of his jeep’s holes. “I think they give ‘em character.”
“If they had any more ‘character,’” said Tully, “we’d have to take them out and bury ‘em!”
Inside the HQ, doing more listening than talking, Troy and Moffitt were having coffee and tea with the two captains, Yates and Travers. Yates made a verbal report of the aerial attack. Later, he intended to put it in writing, but he never got the chance.
“Just came out of nowhere,” he said. “Four Stukas and three Me 109s. I think there’s a Luftwaffe base in the Haidah valley, about a hundred miles from here. Three of the Stukas and two of the Messerschmitts were downed. The sergeants here and their drivers were a great help to us.” Yates smiled, nodding at Troy and Moffitt. “They came out of nowhere, too.”
“We were in the neighborhood,” said Troy, glibly.
“Especially after we got a radio message from Benghazi to join the convoy,” added Moffitt, rather crisply. “Our marching orders.”
Of course, they had orders! Troy smiled over at him. “Lighten up, buddy,” he said.
Moffitt smiled in return. “You want the official report, Troy, to read, ‘We were in the neighborhood’?” Moffitt was teasing him now, and everyone knew it.
“Whew! You Rats are close!” said Travers, reaching for a pack of cigarettes in his pocket. Pulling one up, he reached across the desk and offered it to Moffitt, who shook his head, and then to Troy, who took it and put it between his lips. Fishing out his own lighter, he lit up and soon was inhaling a slice of tobacco heaven.
“You don’t know what you’re missing, Moffitt,” he said, between puffs.
“On the contrary, I do. I just prefer cigars, that’s all.”
“Are they at it again?” asked Yates of Travers and Travers nodded.
“I think so, but I can’t tell. Maybe this is just code.”
The next day, after a peaceful night’s sleep, never suspecting that a juggernaut of German vehicles was on its way to Biddah to avenge the aerial attack, Troy and Moffitt were again meeting with Capts. Yates and Travers. This time the beverage was brandy, and the talk was more about the Rat Patrol’s work at stopping convoys.
“I’d like to see that Captain Dietrich,” said Travers. “I bet he has a lot of explaining to do when you’re through with him.”
Troy became thoughtful for a moment. So did Moffitt. Finally, Troy, who held another lit cigarette in his fingers, spoke up and said, “Dietrich’s a worthy opponent. He’s almost had us a couple of times.”
“Skin of our teeth, kind of thing!” added Moffitt.
Troy put his cigarette between his lips and laughed. “Moffitt can back me up on this, but one time Dietrich—!”
Suddenly there was a crash, the room rocked, a loud blast was heard, and part of the ceiling fell in. All at once. Swiftly covered in dust and debris, the men dove into the corners of the room, followed by Travers’ four MPs. His radio operator jumped off his stool and plunged halfway under his desk. More shocks, like an earthquake, shook the building.
More debris fell, coating everything in thick dust. Travers’ desk was demolished by a falling ceiling beam. Another beam hit the radio, crushing the desk, and with unfortunately accurate precision, the radioman beneath it. Yates, the convoy captain, tried to stand, but another blast hurled him off his feet under an avalanche of mud-brick wall.
Somehow, Troy had managed to hold onto his cigarette, crying around it, “They’re shelling us!”
“Stukas?”
Moffitt had to raise his voice, turning abruptly to the wall as more of the ceiling caved in. When he looked up again, he saw that a whole corner of the HQ’s street-facing wall was missing, turned into drifts of rubble. He could easily see the street. He didn’t like what he saw. Running, screaming men and women, some with children in their arms, were trying to find shelter as artillery fire rained down on their heads.
“No,” Troy yelled back, finally tossing his cigarette away. “Cannon fire!”
Outside, at either side of the gate, an armored car with a 20mm cannon had begun to shell the mud-brick town, bringing pandemonium on the heads of the Arabs and base personnel alike. Screams of agony filled the air as buildings caved in on those who sought shelter there. Amid tense rescues of loved ones, it was the beginning of the end for Biddah.
Chaos, disorder and confusion reigned.
Chapter 2 Digging Out
Troy and Moffitt leapt up during a short lull. Staggering through the rubble of the HQ’s blown-out wall, dodging the debris falling with Biblical destructiveness from the sky, they came to a stop in the street and looked around. Appalled by the noise and smoke, the havoc wreaked by cannon fire, Moffitt whirled at Troy’s outcry.
Knocked off his feet by a sudden blast, Troy threw up his hands as a large piece of roof fell into the street. One of the beams fell against his side. Unmoving, hardly breathing, he lay very still. As the shells of the German guns made the ground quake, Moffitt stumbled over to him. With the air powdery with fragments of old, weather mud-brick, he had so much dust in his eyes he had to shake his head to clear them.
Half-blind and choking, he yelled, “Troy!”
He dug Troy out from under the beam and turned him over, looking at his still face. Swaying to his feet, he lifted him up, turned and carried him back inside Travers’ office. Once there, he came down on one knee, buckling under Troy’s weight and his own dizziness. Straining to put him gently down on the floor, he slid his arms out and leaned back against what was left of the wall. He threw a hand over his eyes and tried to reorder his own breathing. With Troy so still beside him, he couldn’t think about Tully and Hitch right then, except to hope they found shelter from the German barrage.
Trembling like quicksilver, Moffitt placed a dusty hand on the side of Troy’s face, gratified his friend was still warm. As another shell rattled the panes of a window and the squares of glass crashed into pieces on the floor, Troy’s eyes opened and he fought to sit up all the way.
“My side,” he murmured. “What’s wrong with it?”
Then Troy looked up at Moffitt, seeing his red eyes. He must have looked directly up into the debris from one of the blasts.
A large-boned man, Hodges, an MP with two chevrons on his sleeve, slipped over from his refuge and moved Troy’s jacket and shirt away to look at his injury.
“Well?” asked Moffitt, blinking back tears. He wiped his fiery eyes with the back of his hand and left a trail of darker dust across them. He could feel his eye sockets beginning to swell.
“His side’s bleeding,” said Hodges. “Maybe broke some ribs. Help me sit him up.”
Moffitt helped place Troy up against the wall behind them, while Hodges slipped away again and came back with a jug of water. He gently washed out shards of wood and thick blood from Troy’s side.
“Gomez!” he yelled to one of the other MPs. The man staggered over, looking like he’d rather fall down in his dusty clothes and lie there where he fell. “Bring me some bandages from down the hall. Medical unit—see if there’s anyone there still.”
“How bad is it?” asked Troy.
“It’s not that bad,” said Cpl. Hodges. “Just a lot of dirt. It’ll feel sore for a while.”
Gomez returned in short order, carrying a handful of bandages and a few sulfa packets. Hodges sprinkled sulfa on the injury and then reached around Troy’s waist to wrap his side.
“Medics are all outside,” said Gomez. “I caught a glimpse of it. Lots of destruction.”
“Go sit down, Gomez. We’ll have to ride it out.” Hodges’ words were almost cut off by the piercing whine of another shell. Gomez was thrown off his feet. He crawled to a corner of the room.
“Help me up, Moffitt,” said Troy, already half on his feet by the time Hodges tied off his bandage.
Moffitt helped Troy to rearrange his clothes after both men eased him to stand. Just then, as the shelling died down, all three heard groans coming from the area of the base commander’s desk.
Hodges hot-footed it over to the collapsed area where Captain Travers’ desk had sat in front of a double row of windows. Sticking out of the debris, an arm and a leg both moved at the same time. Hodges started pulling away boards and brick, trying not to further injure his commanding officer.
“Look over here,” called Ritter, a dark-haired man of about thirty and another of the four MPs. “Captain Yates. He’s dead. So is the radioman. Crushed the desk and the radio.”
The fourth MP, Pvt. Dearing, a lanky guy with a shock of colorless hair, of about twenty-three, stood up from the floor. His scalp bleeding, he staggered a step only to fall again as another blast from one of the cannons outside tore through the town. He crab-walked over to the inner wall, whose door opened onto a hall shared with the infirmary, and checked out, peacefully. His eyes closed as if he was on a boat in a windless sea. Ritter raced over to him when the quaking of the room slackened and felt his pulse.
“He’s alive, but just barely. His head’s bleeding.”
“Here, catch!” called Moffitt, throwing him some bandages and sulfa. Since the MP was swimming in his wet eyes, he could only hope he threw the medical stuff in the right direction.
“Thanks!” Ritter had made a good, if slightly off-kilter, catch.
“What about Travers?” asked Troy, his throat dusty and hoarse.
Hodges, his impatience magnified the more he unburied his CO, was now throwing debris all over the room in his haste to retrieve Travers’ body, alive or dead. While they waited for his answer, Moffitt swirled the jug around, found a little bit of water left and helped Troy to drink it. With the odd shape of the container, and Moffitt’s not too steady hand, more of it went down Troy’s neck than in his mouth. But just a taste brought back a bit of red to his ashen cheeks.
“Can you see what’s happening with Travers, Moffitt?” he asked.
Troy rarely had a bad sense of timing, Moffitt thought, but if he ever did, it was now. “No, Troy, can’t see much at all. Still blind.”
“You needed that water then.”
“I’ll be fine, Troy. I just keep blinking.”
Troy looked over at his friend. Streaks of grimy water were running down his nose and cheeks. “Moffitt, take a seat on the floor. Here’s Hodges.”
“Hodges?” asked Moffitt, slipping down again with a dizzy shake of his head. He answered his own question. “Oh, yes, corporal in charge of the MPs. Can’t quite make him out,” he said, his voice drifting off, “though I’m sure he’s there.”
Troy climbed up the side of the wall and tried to start off, but he suddenly clutched his side and fell back. He smiled a bit, looking down at Moffitt and saying, “I can’t walk right and you can’t see.”
Hodges had made Captain Travers as comfortable as he could, propping him up against a remnant of the desk, but the man’s waxen face never show signs of coming to.
Lending a hand to Troy, Hodges spoke up. “Captain Yates is dead, Sergeant. Captain Travers is out of action. His back’s broken, I think. I wish the medics had checked in with us before going out.”
“Maybe they had to get out before the roof caved in,” said Troy, suddenly raising his voice. “Incoming!”
Another shell rocked Hodges—and Troy, who had braced himself against the wall—off their feet. Moffitt, even though he was already sitting, was thrown violently to the side. Hodges fell backward into the room and Troy fell over Moffitt’s feet. Moffitt righted himself with difficulty, reached out and helped Troy to sit up again.
“I’ve been on this train before,” muttered the leader of the Rat Patrol. His hair, dark as Moffitt’s, was like his full of white dust. Their plaster-coated faces were ghost-like, like the MPs’.
Both men were of equal rank. Both were nearly matched in skill and ability, though in different ways. Troy could see through a problem and make a snap decision, usually the right one. Moffitt preferred to mull things over a bit. With his vast knowledge, he’d always add something relevant to Troy’s decision.
In an old house by a dark, winding river, Moffitt had been raised in England. At age ten, Troy was throwing ropes over stray cattle in the Gunnison Valley of western Colorado. Moffitt’s doctorate came from centuries-old Cambridge, while Troy earned letters in pole vaulting and track and field at Gunnison High School.
But though the two came from different worlds, sometimes there was nothing more than air separating them. One almost knew what the other was thinking before any words were spoken. If at any time it became necessary, Sgt. Sam Troy, in charge of their unit, trusted Moffitt to take over.
“How much longer is Jerry going to shell us?” asked the Englishman, beginning to rub his eyes again.
“Hope not long.” Looking up at him, Troy said, “Leave ‘em alone, Moffitt.”
Moffitt sighed and took his hand away. Everything was a blur, but he knew his sight would get better with time. He wished he had some water, though. Some to drink, and some to wash out the brick dust.
“Troy, who’s doing this? Dietrich?”
“Dietrich might be. Can’t tell,” Troy answered. “The Allied base is here, but so are plenty of Arabs. Women and children.”
“I hope for a speedy end to this. We’re helpless. And so are the Arabs.”
“You’ve got that right, Moffitt.”
Troy tried to stand again but an explosion in the street in front of the headquarters rocked him back. The concussion was felt by all the men in Travers’ office, except Pvt. Dearing. Wild horses couldn’t have shaken him awake, such was the sleep of youth, mixed with pain.
After an hour or so more, the shells began to fall at intervals of five or ten minutes, then every half-hour, and then slacked off altogether. There was at last silence in the air. No more screaming shells, no more explosions, but soon there arose a fearful wailing and keening out in the street.
“I think it’s finally over,” said Moffitt. “What happens next we’ll soon enough know.”
“Help me up,” said Troy, for the fiftieth time. This time, he hoped he’d make it off the wall. There was a lot to do with both Yates and Travers out of the picture. Moffitt was unwell. Not just his eyes, either. He was slurring his speech and his hands kept up a constant movement as if he was fending off flies. Troy would let him rest. “I’ve got to see what’s happened to the base. Hodges!”
Intrepid, erstwhile Hodges sped over and helped him up, and then walked him over to a place behind the desk, both men crunching over glass from the broken windows, where he could see outside. It was a strange observation post. All Troy could do was lean on the bit of wall remaining. Hodges, at Troy’s command, took the other two still-standing MPs, Pvts. Ritter and Gomez, out into the street to round up any base personnel or convoy troops they could find.
At that moment, Hitch and Tully came full-steam into the office, carrying four Thompsons, two apiece. Tully, wearing his helmet, had his arm in a sling. Sizing up Moffitt, with his clouded vision, he knelt down and, without touching him, looked at his eyes. Moffitt was rubbing them again.
“Don’t fuss with them, Doc,” he said, calmly.
Troy swung around and noticed Tully had been injured. “What’s happened to you? Why the sling?”
Tully was plain-spoken as usual. “I was looking for people in one of the houses and part of a wall fell in on me. Hitch fixed me up.”
Moffitt reached over, gingerly taking Tully’s arm in his long-fingered hands. Trying to focus on it, he asked, “Is it broken?”
“Can’t rightly tell, Doc, but Hitch doesn’t think so.”
“Dr. Hitch,” said Troy, grinning at him as he came to stand at his side, “did you see any genuine medical people?”
“A few, Sarge, they were helping with the injured. That’s where the sling came from.”
Troy confided, “I’ve sent the three MPs, all except the one on the floor over there—he’s out of it—to find any of the base’s people and tell them to report here.”
Handing Troy the one thing Troy felt most comfortable with, besides the jeep’s fifty, a tommy gun, Hitch turned again and looked at Doc, still locked in Tully’s unyielding stare, then he laid Moffitt’s SMG on an unbroken stretch of window sill next to Troy. Troy nodded his understanding.
Moffitt wouldn’t be using it. Just like Pvt. Dearing, the sleeping private, Moffitt was ‘out of it.’
“What’s going on in town, Hitch?”
“It’s bad out there, Sarge,” replied the private, resettling his granny specs. “The town’s in ruins.”
“What about Jerry? Any moves to drop in on us?”
Hitch shook his head. “Don’t think they want to tangle with us just yet. Maybe they’re waiting for night.”
“We need water,” said Troy. “Moffitt’s eyes—”
“I’ll go get some, Sarge,” offered Tully, finally breaking off his scrutiny of Moffitt’s enflamed eyes. Biddah had no piped water, no taps, they’d found that out last night when asking about showers. Too primitive. There were only a couple of wells.
“I’ll go with you,” said Moffitt, beginning to rise. “I’ve had about all I can stand of this room.”
He clapped his beret on his head and got on his feet with Tully’s help. Stooping again, he grabbed the water jug from earlier, then let Tully lead him over the broken bricks of the demolished street-front wall. Before he was out of sight, he was back to rubbing his eyes again. Troy saw him, grinned and shook his head. Stubborn Brit, he wanted to say—but didn’t. He was worried how far sound might carry on the dry desert air!
Favoring his side, he stepped away from the blown-out windows into the main part of the room. Hitch guided him over to the dead radio operator’s stool and Troy sat down on it with a huge sigh. His injury, however bad it was, almost took the breath out of him whenever he moved around.
“Hitch,” he said to the tall private at his side. “I’ve got a special job for you.”
“A job, Sarge?”
“I want you to get away from here, go find help.”
“Sarge, there’s a lot of Jerries out there, some big guns, too. How can I find help on the desert?”
“You must try, Hitch. Now that the town’s been flattened, the Germans will move in any time now. We can’t fight our way out of this with the fifties—by the way, how are the jeeps?”
“Fine, sir. The motor pool is far enough away to have avoided most of the shelling. Just a few more scratches and dents.”
“Those jeeps thrive on scratches and dents, don’t they?” Troy laughed at his own joke. “Well, now, let’s get you safely on your way. C’mon.”
With effort, and Hitch’s support, Troy led the way out of the building by the same route just taken by Moffitt and Tully, the broken wall. Standing in front of the office, he looked up at the end of the street where the town gate used to be. A couple of armored cars, equipped with the long barrels of 20mm cannons, sat on either side of the entryway, poised to spring like lions. Several other yellow-hued vehicles sat at various positions behind the two guns, a whole parade littering the desert and completely entrapping the town.
“I don’t know when we’ll find out who did this,” said Troy in a confidential whisper to Hitch, though with all of the noise and commotion in the street, he didn’t have to lower his voice. “I’ll get back inside and see what Hodges turns up.”
“I ought to stay with you, Sarge. In case the base is overrun.”
“No, Hitch, I need you to find help. The others’ll be back soon. Hodges and the MPs. Can you find a way out on your own?” He winced over the last words.
“Count on me, Sarge. I’ll go by the jeeps and grab a canteen. That way, I’ll last longer out there.”
Troy looked at him closely. “It’s okay with me, Hitch, if you don’t like this idea.”
Hitch smiled, pulled his cap on straighter, and turned to run back to the motor pool. As Troy returned to the HQ on his own, clutching his side, Hitch ran into Moffitt and Tully coming back from one of the two wells. Moffitt’s eyes were still red and swollen, but his face was cleaner than before. He was carrying the water. Tully was trying to keep up with Moffitt’s long strides.
“Where are you off to?” asked Tully. “Got a special date?”
“I’ve only been in town a day and a half, Tully!”
“That’s long enough for you! What’s the rush?”
“I’ve got a job to do for Sarge.”
The other two nodded and re-entered the building over the rubble, Tully giving Moffitt an extra hand. Hitch paused in the street, taking a moment to register that he might never see any of this friends again, thinking especially of Troy.
Poor Sarge. He had his hands full. The Germans had shelled the town to smithereens only that morning, leaving death and destruction in their wake, and might at any moment ride in through the busted gate as pretty as you please.
With every other member of the Rat Patrol injured in some way, and only himself up to par, Hitch knew he had a special task ahead of him. He had to find help, but help of any kind was going to be as rare as finding diamonds on a beach. He scaled a wall anyway, leaving behind the demolished Allied base, as well as many homeless and injured.
The skies were a bright shade of blue, no clouds, but the sun was even brighter, a striking, blinding white light trimmed in orange. He had only a scant amount of water in his canteen, plucked from his jeep. He had left town in too much of a hurry to refill it.
Now as he struggled across the sands on foot, he really wished he had a jeep under him. The streets had been too full of rubble to get a jeep through, and the only entrance, the front gate, was guarded by the two golden ‘lions,’ the armored cars each with their own 20mm cannon.
Chapter 3 Mirage
From his observation post at the half-wall—the portion of the front of the building left standing—Troy saw Moffitt and Tully approaching and Hitch going on his way. Gradually getting the ‘feel’ of his wound, he believed he could bear it now. Taking the jug Moffitt offered, he downed several large gulps.
“I hope there’s more,” he said, pulling the rim of the tin jug from his lips. “We’ll need it.”
“The well’s fine. Tully and I are going back to help out, Troy,” said Moffitt. “Are you alright here?”
“I’m setting up a kind of command post, in case Jerry tries to enter.”
“The gate’s gone,” Moffitt said. “Completely. Except for rubble, there’s nothing in their way.”
“I wonder why they’re waiting,” said Tully.
“Waiting?” asked Troy.
“Yes, waiting to come in here and finish us off.”
Everyone was quiet for a few seconds, realizing that this could be their last day. Then Troy broke the spell.
“Moffitt, try to find some help for your eyes,” he said. “And, Tully, be careful of that arm.”
Already on his way out, Tully spun around, smiled and yelled back, “Right, Sarge!” To Moffitt, who had followed him out, leaving the water jug with Troy and the MPs, he leaned in and said, “Is he a mother hen, or what, Doc?”
“More of a what, I should think, Tully.” Moffitt was pleased with his joke. More seriously, he added, “He’s got a lot on him right now. The base all but gone, all of us injured. Now the Arabs are fired up by our presence here.”
Tully knew what he meant. Always direct, he said, “Can’t blame them much, Doc. We put the base here. The Germans bombed it.”
Moffitt sighed and stopped Tully for a second. “And now, we have to pay the piper. Let’s see what we can do here. Maybe we can mend a fence or two, at least.”
Fuzzy-seeing, Moffitt along with his young friend joined a crowd digging in the rubble of their fallen houses, casting it aside, some of it in nearly whole pieces, very large and very heavy. Tully in his sling struggled to keep up with his half-sighted friend, but he couldn’t help using his bad arm until he seemed to be breaking down.
Moffitt didn’t take long to notice. He called him up short. “Tully, with that arm, you’d be better off helping the medics. I can handle this.”
“Guess I can’t fault that logic, Doc,” he said, then as he turned to go, he stopped. He saw Moffitt also halt to watch the same thing.
The Arabs, men in dusty djellabas, their eyes pits of dark hostility, looked up from their work as the two Allies prepared to separate, while some of the younger women pushed their small children back against remaining walls. There was a low moan rising from both groups. Tully, part of him worried about their intentions, understood their pain—and the blame they put on the Allies’ and the Germans’ heads alike.
Leaving Moffitt somewhat reluctantly, he soon enough found a makeshift field hospital and fell to washing away blood and wrapping up scrapes and bruises, just like tending his brothers and a tomboyish sister back home. Knowing his limits, he let the medics deal with head and shrapnel wounds and setting broken legs and arms.
Even after the long hours he had put in to help the locals with their dead and injured, looking out, Tully saw there was still so much to do. He hadn’t liked leaving Troy alone at the base HQ, where Troy was putting together a small army of MPs and soldiers. The ‘army’ wouldn’t be big enough, of course, to force a stand-off with the Germans, but in the final contest with the enemy, it might make a grand last stand.
Holed up in the wrecked HQ, a building facing the market area and not too far from the ruined gate, Troy asked Hodges for his report regarding able-bodied men, but the answer wasn’t what he wanted to hear. Along with the MPs, there were some troops belonging to Yates’ convoy in fighting trim, but except for a handful of medics, and lots of patients, both Arab and army alike, the manpower outlook was grim.
“How many convoy troops are there?”
“About twelve, Sergeant,” said Hodges. “I set up a few in two or three areas to watch the walls, in case the Germans try to scale them.”
Troy blew out. His head felt woozy, exhaustion nearly claiming him. “That’s all we need. The Huns coming over the parapets! Just like in the middle ages!” He looked around. “What happened to Ritter?”
“He’ll be along, Sarge. Caught a rock with his head,” said Gomez. “It came out of nowhere. He’s gettin’ fixed up.”
“You mean, someone threw the rock? Now we’re being attacked by the Arabs?”
Both Gomez and Hodges found other places to look than at Troy’s face. Hodges did say, “Yeah, Sarge,” choosing to use the more familiar term ‘Sarge’ now that they were all in this together. “The Arabs don’t like us any better than they do Jerry, Sarge.”
Troy set the three MPs at the windows, manning their own guns through the shattered glass, while he looked over his tommy gun and checked the box magazine. He filled it to its capacity of thirty rounds from his belt’s ammo pouch and hammered it in with the heel of his hand. Then he turned to the half-wall again and got into position to fire should any sign of the Germans materialize.
Hitch floundered in the sand. His boots digging in, it was a huge effort to pull them out and take another step. And then another. And another. The last swig of his canteen was gone. He was sunburned, parched and weaponless, his tommy gun lost in the sands miles ago. He had to find help, and soon, or he was going to die, and die today.
He had no illusions on that score. With each footfall he put in the sand, his life-force was ebbing away. He was dying from the inside out. A man couldn’t face the desert for hours and hours with no water or shade. He had no hope of a reprieve from death, and death in this way. Alone and unaided.
Hitch wasn’t sorry Sarge had sent him on this mission. He was only sorry he couldn’t fulfill it the way Troy needed him to. Biddah, the Arab town, had been under siege when he left, but if he tried to return to it, to lend what help he could he was so lost now he couldn’t even find his way back to it.
Trying to climb a forty-foot dune, he slipped and rolled back down again, sprawling on his face in the sand, his arms spread out from his body and one of his legs bent. After a few minutes, he slowly lifted his head at what he thought was the rumble of some desert vehicle. Friend or foe, it didn’t matter. Brushing some of the sand out of his eyes, he peered at the top of the dune where the sound was coming from.
Then he saw them. Several vehicles, painted yellow, the camouflage color of the Afrika Korps, were making a snake chain across the ridge of the dune. They weren’t stopping so they hadn’t spotted him yet. Laying his head back in the sand again, Hitch thought of several things at once.
Here, he had been presented with some kind of miracle. After all his struggles in the desert, he might even yet be rescued, but by whom? Germans? Did he want to end up in a POW camp run by the Wehrmacht? Did he want to die here? What choice was there? Dying, at his age? If he could help it, that wasn’t even an option.
But what if they just shot him, instead of taking him prisoner? He was only a private. To the Germans, he was useless. What did he know of troop movements, locations of ammo dumps, or artillery build-up? He wasn’t much good to anyone, except for one thing. He was a Rat, a member of the Rat Patrol, which harried German convoys, especially Dietrich’s, up and down the desert. There was even a bounty on his head.
What if it was Dietrich? Captain Hans Dietrich, the man Sarge and his unit tormented the most? Though not a man to kill prisoners, he might make an exception in Hitch’s case, all just to get back at Sgt. Troy for destroying his convoy a month ago on these very sands. It’d been carrying vital military and medical supplies for Dietrich’s base at al-Qarah. The Rats had left it a smoking wreck.
The jeeps, riding in, had shot up Dietrich’s trucks and half-trucks, even putting a couple of .50 cal. holes in his Kubelwagen. Not that it hadn’t been shot up at other times! After a few well-lobbed grenades from the gunners Troy and Moffitt, Dietrich’s blasted column had gone limping home with its tail tucked between its legs. Hitch imagined Dietrich had, too.
He laughed slightly at the analogy and only managed to get more sand on his tongue. Then there were jackboots surrounding him. As he was lifted onto his feet, the world spun quickly, and two of the German soldiers walked him, swaying in their hands, up the dune. Once at the top, prizing his eyes open as far as sun and sand would allow, he leaned back and gazed up at the tall officer standing before him, hands on hips.
“Pvt. Mark Hitchcock,” said this desert apparition, his tone clipped. “Strange to meet one of the Rat Patrol out by himself. Where are the others?”
“Others, sir?” He tried to lick his lips, but his tongue was too dry. “There are no others. Just me. I’m out here, that’s all.”
The officer gestured for water to be brought. He himself lifted the canteen to Hitch’s lips and let him take slow sips. Patiently, he advised him to go slow.
Hitch decided to ‘come clean.’ “They need help, sir.”
“Who—Troy, Moffitt, Pvt. Pettigrew?”
Hitch nodded, and almost slipped off his feet with the motion of his head, but the soldiers tightened their grips on his arms.
“I’m sick,” he said. “Too much sun. I’m really sick.”
He fell out of the soldiers’ hold and down to his knees, his head lolling forward on his chest.
The officer raised his head and shook it slightly to make Hitch open his eyes again.
“How do they need help?” asked the German. “Where are they?”
“Biddah… shelled town.” Water sprang to Hitch’s eyes as he thought of his lost comrades. He was young. Crying came easier to the young, he knew. He wasn’t a sissy. He was just tired. Lost.
“Biddah? Over ten miles away. I can’t possibly go that far. Some of my supplies are perishable.”
“They need help!” urged Hitch.
“Here’s what I’ll do. I drive you in my car as far as Biddah, then let you out. The rest of my convoy can go on to my base.”
“I wouldn’t mind that dying with them. Unless they’re already dead.”
“Who shelled the town?”
“Don’t know who. Two armored vehicles with big guns. It’s all over, probably, by now.”
Gently bringing the American private to his feet, brushing him off, the German officer took him to his own scout car, helping him in the back, and handing him the canteen of water. He didn’t bother to tie the young private’s hands. He was, but then he was also not a prisoner. He did signal for another soldier to join him in the scout car as a guard.
Wearing a multiple-pocket jacket with ‘Afrika’ on the lower left sleeve and jodhpurs, both in khaki, black boots and a peaked cap, this officer then entered the car and instructed his driver, a chubby young German with a penchant for scowling, to drive to Biddah, just the four of them. The rest of the convoy continued on in the direction of the officer’s base.
Once at the besieged town, the first thing visible were swirls of smoke lifting into the air, blown away on a high desert breeze. The second thing to note was the crying, wailing, keening—whatever romantic words fit the utter soulless misery sent up in those outcries. Both deep voices and lighter ones made the sound that could rip out the heart of a thinking man, and the officer was a thinking man. He was a planner, a tactician, a man of many maneuvers in his long efforts to bring the Rat Patrol to bay in a trap they couldn’t breach. But he had never been a heartless man.
He had failed to destroy them, contain them, or even outmaneuver them. Now he had arrived at the juncture of bringing one of them back to the others, though it was highly questionable if any member of the Allied base in that town was still alive, or at least free.
Turning to gaze across the intervening sands at the besieging vehicles–four troop trucks, two armored cars at the gate with cannons and machine guns, and a Kubelwagen like his own, but this one poised to enter the conquered town—he did not like to see it. It was not how he wanted to fight this war. A war on women and children. A war on men unable to mount a strong defense.
“Complete devastation,” Dietrich murmured to himself. The captain swung on Hitch next.
“Will you reconsider, Pvt. Hitchcock, and come back with me? There’s nothing left for you there, but more death. I can’t stop it. I’m not even supposed to try.”
Hitch looked at the officer standing beside him on a slight, sandy rise. Both had exited the Kubelwagen and were gazing at the fires and smoke below. He hadn’t realized the German captain had a soul to mourn the waste of lives.
“I have to go back, sir, even if I die. It’s my place. You can understand that?”
Hesitating a second, a catch in his throat, the officer said, “I do. Go on. You’re free.”
Hitch turned and offered the other man a full salute, then he loped down the hill, heading for the same wall he had scaled hours ago. The captain reentered his vehicle, then the Kubelwagen carrying the officer and his frowning driver, Kurt Hilfer, started up and drove off, back towards al-Qarah, the officer’s home base and his chief worry at present.
Chapter 4 Mêlée
In Biddah …
As he hunted in the rubble for the injured and the dead, Moffitt tossed off a piece of wooden beam he had just picked up, a part of a demolished house, and gazed up at his driver approaching. Tully was carrying a cloth-covered bundle in his one good arm, clutching it to his chest. His face was distorted in a way Moffitt had seen in London once, when he was on leave, after a night’s bombing.
A faraway, tragic look. Then he saw the bundle and sickening, turned away, his mouth becoming firm, but his eyes softening. He was a Brit, and a sergeant. He had to ‘act’ the part, to be strong, so he turned back to Tully and strode forward.
Moffitt took the bundle gently, though it could feel nothing now, and with a wave, he brought an Arab woman over to him. She was with other women, their voices raised in keening wails. He handed her bundle and then grabbed his friend, who was in danger of falling. The woman nodded to him in understanding that it was hers now—hers to bury—and slipped back to the others.
Spotting a stack of crates against an intact wall, a wall still shadowed by its roof, he led Tully over, careful of his arm, and helped him to sit down. After so long with the dying and the dead, each man was done in.
Tully looked up, his glistening eyes seeking Moffitt’s. “I found her in the rubble, Doc.”
Standing beside Tully, Moffitt glanced at the broken mud-bricks in the street and nodded. “I saw this kind of devastation in London, on my trip home.” Here, Moffitt’s voice hardened, but his eyes were still soft and faraway. “This war spares no one. No one!”
Tully couldn’t help but recall the letter from Moffitt’s ‘mum’ a few weeks ago about his younger brother, how Chet had died in a bombing attack in England. He had to be remembering that, too.
Moffitt poured out a bit of water from his canteen and splashed his red eyes with it, then handed the canteen to Tully, who drank and capped it. Gazing around at their position, Moffitt saw a sight he had dreaded the most. In the high sun, shadowy figures were slipping over the twenty-foot-high walls of Biddah, then leaping into the streets below.
Kurst’s men were at last braving Allied firepower and infiltrating the town.
“Tully!” Moffitt whispered, shaking Tully good shoulder. “Germans!”
Tully had removed his helmet and closed his eyes. It was the first real rest he’d had all day, and here under the roof, the sun was warm, but not too warm. Waking instantly to Moffitt’s outcry, he jumped off the stack of crates, threw on his helmet, and turned to face the enemy.
He didn’t get far. Two of the invaders spotted him and, dropping their rifles on the crates, tackled him to the ground. Moffitt quickly joined in. Soon it was a brawl, a slugging match pitting tired, injured men against strong, hardy ones.
The outcome was inevitable. Though Moffitt and Tully got in a fair number of blows, battering their opponents with fists and karate chops, they were overwhelmed as two or three more leapt into the fight. Tully’s sharp-bladed fighting knife was taken; he hadn’t even had time to draw it.
Standing off to the sides, the Arabs, covered in dirt and blood, watched the fight unfold, not taking sides. The two Allies were coming under the blows of seven Germans, but they were giving as good as they got. That impressed the Arabs, especially the young men.
“Why let them fight their battle alone?” they asked one elder.
“Because neither side is ours,” he responded. “The men are invaders, all of them. Let Allah decide who should win.”
Even though they were itching to get into the fight on the side of the Allies, the young men held off. Clenching and unclenching their fists, they had become spectators in their own town. And what they saw was that Allah was not making it easy for the Allies.
A trio of Germans knocked the dark-haired sergeant off his feet, hammering away at him as all four rolled over the broken mud-bricks in the street. A strong belt to the jaw made him stiffen at first, and then go limp. The red-haired one, his helmet having rolled away, was in no better predicament. He likewise had too many to handle.
Slipping out of his sling, Tully flipped one of the Germans over his shoulder and was righting himself when another dove for his legs and toppled him sideways. Grappling with him, Tully felt the man pushing his head back uncomfortably far, his fingers boring into Tully’s eyes.
A revolver shot broke the soldier’s hold, and spent, Tully slipped to the ground. The German who had fired his weapons, a sergeant, reached in and hauled the American to his feet. Then along with Moffitt, Tully was pushed towards the market square where the main body of the enemy had installed itself. The remainder of the Allies, still reeling from the unremitting bombing earlier in the day, were giving the Germans very little trouble.
Many of the Arabs, some of them murmuring, followed the Germans, while others went back to their recovery work. A few of the young men left the crowd, entering a building only to return, moments later, with deadly tools embedded in the sashes of their robes. They’d fight for honor, for the right to hold their heads up in their own town, if not permitted to fight for the Allies themselves.
Seeing the Germans stealing over the walls, Troy and his tiny MP army slipped out of the HQ office and accosted the infiltrators. Firing as he went, Troy ran down the street, taking out several of the enemy before they knew what hit them. The Germans dove for what cover they could find on the opposite side of the street, and then from their refuges turned and fired back.
Tommy guns vs. Schmeissers. Eight-round M1 Garands vs. five-round Kar 98ks. At first well ahead of the game, Troy and his MPs were gradually forced back to their side of the street by the numbers facing them. The last man to reenter the HQ, Troy kept up continuous bursts of static from his SMG.
He directed the MPs to take up window positions, even if the windows had been blown out already, while he went back to the half-wall. Sighting a couple of Germans creeping over the rubble towards his HQ, he fired in two short groups of three rounds and took them out. Others who had the same idea of over-running the Allied HQ turned back at seeing their comrades fall, but not without getting off a few shots, and hid on the other side again.
During all of this, one of the two armored cars—which rolled on four wheels instead of tracks, and were each equipped with a 20mm cannon and an M34 machine gun—made its slow way over the remains of the wrecked gate and rolled down the debris-filled street. A bumpy ride for its three-man crew, a driver, spotter, and gunner.
When it was in position, its turret swung around and a shell was lobbed towards Troy’s HQ, exploding and tearing open another hole in the front wall of the office. Gomez, at that side, screamed and fell back from his window, buried in rubble, dead. Troy had been knocked off his feet, along with Hodges who had been kneeling next to him, his M1 Garand at the ready.
Crawling, dazed, his head splitting, towards his gun, Troy dropped his hand on it, then by slow degrees drew it to him and fought to get to his feet again, lending Hodges a hand this time. Both men crept back to the cover of the small portion of the front wall left, Troy firing directly at the man in the turret who carried the field glasses, the spotter. The man slumped over the side of the turret, but the gunner then began firing the machine gun at Troy’s position. This close, he didn’t need a spotter to locate his enemy.
Troy threw himself behind the sliver of wall and waited it out, then faced the street again and fired. Again, he hit his target, but the gunner, even as he was dying, triggered another burst and hit his mark. Troy felt a sharp graze against his upper left arm and fell back, wincing in pain.
“Troy! Sgt. Troy!” yelled Hodges, who was reloading his rifle. “Keep shooting!”
Troy wanted to take a few seconds to collect his wits, but forcing himself to ignore the pain, turned back to the wall and faced the street, ready to fire again at the gunner in the armored car. Seeing he was slumped over his gun, Troy directed his fire to another set of three soldiers slipping up to rout him out. Hodges accounted for one of them, Troy for two.
After that, there was a kind of dusty quiet to the street. The armored car, with its two dead men in the turret, but its driver still very much alive, began to reverse itself, even as a new element entered the scene. Hostages!
Taking a breather from firing, warm blood soaking his sleeve, Troy watched in great dismay as more Germans came down the street, pushing ahead of them locals, old and crippled, women and children. Some of his convoy troops, who Hodges had placed around town to watch the walls—and they had, until overrun—along with a few medics, were shoved down against the walls opposite Troy’s HQ.
The square was soon crowded with people of all stamps. First up, the Arabs. Dozens of children, some wandering about, some tucked up tight on their mother’s lap. Secondly, the troops from the convoy in khaki fatigues, several swathed in bandages, and medics with red armbands and disconcerted looks on their faces. Thirdly, Germans with their MP40s or Schmeissers trained on the others, their eyes watching every move and fingers touching triggers.
In approaching the square, Moffitt and Tully couldn’t help but hear gunfire. Thrust down in the lee of the ruined buildings, out of the sun, in the somewhat strained silence of a ceasefire, they watched the retreating German car. Both men had little doubt as to why one of the enemy slumped over the side of the turret. Troy. Troy, along with his MP army.
The second act of this confrontation was about to begin. A scout car, or Kubelwagen, its spare tire positioned prominently on top of its angled hood, drove into view from the direction of the gate, but it stayed—rather conveniently—on the shady, far side of the street opposite Troy’s HQ. Its passenger, a German major, unafraid of stray bullets, stood up in the car as soon as it stopped.
“Interesting,” muttered Moffitt to Tully at his side. “Must be the German who led this attack.”
Tully nodded, his bruised eyes barely open and his hurt arm lying across his middle. “I hope Sarge can deal with him.”
“If he can’t, Pvt. Pettigrew,” Moffitt said in an arch way, “I’m afraid we’re all lost.”
If Troy gave in, the base would fall to the Germans. Allied High Command—or somebody up there—must have had a reason for putting it in the small settlement of Biddah in the first place. They’d probably want to keep it there.
With the silent, frightened folks, all guarded closely, situated along the walls behind him, the major yelled towards the building where the last remnant of the base’s defense was holed up.
“I’m Major Gunther Kurst. Unless you surrender to me at once, I will order one of these people shot for every minute you delay.”
Inside the ruined HQ, the direct western sun streaked the floor and made the room too hot for all but sand fleas. In the afternoon’s heat, the major’s voice carried quite well to the ears of Sgt. Troy, now in charge of bringing order out of chaos on this base.
Troy, his gun butt propped on his leg, had reloaded Thompson’s magazine again. Turning to the MP corporal, he said, “He’s got Moffitt and Tully, Hodges.” His voice betrayed his grim feeling. “See them? Over there.”
“I see ‘em, Sarge.” Hodges now stood in Gomez’s place at one of the broken windows, where he had watched the retreating armored car. “What’ll we do now?”
Turning, Kurst signaled to one of his armed men. Two strode over to the wall where the troops, medics, and Moffitt and Tully were. They grabbed one of the convoy troops who fought to free himself, kicking and trying to wrench away, but to no avail. Marched out into the open space by a well, between Troy’s HQ and Kurst’s scout car, he was thrust to his knees. Worried about this bad turn, Moffitt had come to his feet. A guard raised his Schmeisser at him.
As if made of stout steel, instead of only flesh, Moffitt barely looked at it as he brushed it aside with his hand. He knew what Troy was going through. If he gave up, he’d be giving up the whole base to the enemy. And his life. No way would the commander, Major Kurst, allow the men of the Rat Patrol, once he knew who they were, to live.
Tully reached up with his good arm and grasped Moffitt’s pants leg at the knee. Moffitt looked down at him, seeing the fear and dismay written in Tully’s eyes.
“Doc, there’s nothing you can do. Only Sarge can take any action now.”
Moffitt’s face, once hard and angular, softened. Tully—battered by German fists, his arm crooked over his chest and out of action—was at the end of his rope. Finally seeing him and all his hurts, Moffitt heard a sudden shot in the square. Kurst had positioned one of his men to shoot, execution-style, then gave the order to fire. The private—Moffitt didn’t even know his name—collapsed to the hard-packed sand of the street.
Breaking Tully’s hold, Moffitt leaped forward, but Tully scrambled to his feet and grabbed hold of his arm, not letting him go out there.
The color had all but drained out of Moffitt’s face. “They shot him,” he breathed, in revulsion. Now Kurst was speaking again.
“That was just the first man to die,” Kurst yelled towards the HQ building. “Come out, ready to lay down your weapons, or he won’t be the last.”
Inside the darkened interior of the bombed HQ office, the MPs at the windows shared a few low-key words with one another. None wanted to disturb Troy’s dire thoughts at that moment, except Cpl. Hodges, leaning over his gun barrel. He turned towards Troy. “If they take the base, Sergeant, we’ll all die. You can’t turn it over.”
His eyes peering over the half-wall, Troy ran a hand through his damp hair and weighed aloud what seemed to him to be his only option. “He’s going to shoot every man on the base, one by one, if I don’t. And some of the locals maybe.”
He had been thrust into command when Travers and Yates had gone down. Being the leader of a raiding unit of desert rats was one thing, commanding men in a no-win situation quite another.
“He’ll kill us all anyway, Sarge,” Hodges said. “Now or later, what’s the difference?”
His blunt words steeled Troy to keep fighting. He turned again at the sound of Kurst’s harsh voice and focused on the hostages as Kurst raised his arm and pointed out the next man to be shot. Troy, in the bright light of late day, saw clearly who it was. Tully.
Chapter 5 Unexpected Help
“Bring that one,” yelled Kurst over the clamor of the Arabs and their children. Kurst had rounded up all of the ones left on their feet and brought them to the square as hostages. Troy saw right off that there was a notable absence among these folks. Elders there were in plenty, but of the young men, not one.
Catching his breath, he watched in excruciating torment as two of the guards repeated the same procedure with Tully as they had with the first man. Forced onto his feet with no regard for his injury, Tully was given a shove towards the well where the last killing had taken place. That was all it took for Moffitt to act.
He reached forward with both of his bound hands and wrenched Tully out of their grip, thrusting him back. Tully hit the wall so hard, he saw stars in front of his eyes. As events began to unfold, his heart raced. He didn’t know why Doc had done that, shoved him out of the way, then he knew.
Moffitt strode forward and took up a spot near the well where the dead man’s body still lay, a crumpled set of desert fatigues with no life in them. About twenty feet in front of Kurst’s scout car, Moffitt faced the building where Troy was and spoke up.
“Troy! Sgt. Troy!” He called him ‘sergeant’ in front of Jerry, and made sure to use his name. If they were going to die, Moffitt wanted their names to be known. “You don’t have to give in. We’re all wiling to die, if need be, to save this base.”
One of the two guards who had followed him into the street reached up to Moffitt’s shoulder and pushed him down to his knees. For an instant, Moffitt’s eyes clouded over as the full realization of what was about to happen struck home. He was going to die, to shuffle off this mortal coil, as Hamlet had said. Now what made him think of that?
His gaze fell to the sand, but when he raised his head again, his eyes were defiant.
Troy felt gut-punched. Hitch had escaped into the desert to find help, but no help would arrive in time to save Jack Moffitt. He was, by rights, a dead man out there. Troy’s friend, and fellow traveler in the war, the only man who had ever understood him, and his impatience with life, was about to take a bullet in the back of the head, as the private had just before him.
With his shoulders sagging, his courage faltered a bit. Troy let his eyes drop for a split second, then much as Moffitt had, he forced himself to raise them again.
“Sgt. Troy! Troy?” exclaimed Kurst from his Kubelwagen. “Then this man must be Sgt. Moffitt, and that one at the wall, perhaps he’s Hitchcock or Pettigrew?” Just like he was meeting with movie celebrities, Kurst said, “I’m glad to meet you. It’s been a long time coming.”
Gripping his tommy gun, Troy signaled to the last two MPs to step back from their vantage points at the windows, while he moved around to the open, collapsed wall. Stepping over the mud-bricks again, he walked out into the sun, his gun raised in one hand. Then he lowered it, and as he did he gripped the barrel with his other hand. Without firing, he leveled the Thompson on Kurst as he stood proud and erect in his scout car.
“One move to shoot that man,” Troy said, “and you’ll be next, Kurst!”
He heard a soft, regret-laden voice, Moffitt’s, saying, “No, Troy, no. They’ll kill you for sure now.”
Hitch, after creeping along the broken walls of houses and shops, was astounded by what he saw in the square. Germans, locals sitting in what shade they could find, Sarge with a tommy gun aimed at a German major in a Kubelwagen, and Moffitt, tall even when he was on his knees, with a gun to his head. The German private holding it seemed ready to pull the trigger. It was a stand-off such as Hitch had never seen before.
If Sarge pulled the trigger, the major in the scout car would die, but then so would Doc. Troy would likely share the same fate, and that instantly. Hitch, hiding in a dark doorway, could do nothing. He had no gun and couldn’t raise much of a ruckus if he had. He could only watch, wait, and see.
“It’s time to end the Rat Patrol problem once and for all,” said Kurst. “I have three of you, so I assume the fourth is around somewhere, Sergeant?”
“He’s where you’ll never find him.”
“I have a way of finding things.” Kurst smiled. “I found you. Drop your weapon and your friend will live. Drop it now!”
Troy hesitated for a slight second, then thrust the gun away from him. Not entirely by chance, it landed close to the feet of his fellow sergeant. Troy wondered if Moffitt’s eyes were still so bad he couldn’t see the gun lying within three feet of him.
He squared his shoulders for what he knew would happen next. He was seized by rough hands and dragged over to Kurst’s Kubelwagen.
“Gun, Moffitt!” Troy shouted.
Turning, he punched one man in the jaw, then gut-punched the other. Moffitt squinted at the ground, and seeing the token of Troy’s trust, grabbed it, came to his feet, and fired upon Kurst. Struck in the chest, Kurst fell backward over his driver, a private who was glad of Kurst’s body blocking him as Moffitt continued to fire.
At that moment, the Arabs chose to strike. Fed up with Germans and Allies alike, they had come to the agreement that the Allies were better to deal with, so from the alleyways the young men rushed out, drawing their knives out of their sashes, slashing where appropriate, stabbing at other times.
Since the Germans had congregated on that side of the street, behind Kurst, the Arabs had a field day in cutting them down. The convoy troops joined in, and even a few of the medics. These hardworking men inflicted wounds with ease, having sewn up so many of them that day. Moffitt himself accounted for several of the soldaten with Troy’s rapid-fire gun.
Through one of the broken HQ windows, Hodges tossed Troy an M1 Garand. It had been Pvt. Dearing’s. Dearing still lay on the floor, oblivious to the goings-on in the street. If he ever did wake up—a mighty big ‘if’—he might remember a little noise, some unsettled dust, and not much else. In this chaos, his would be the best recall of that day.
Troy relished having a ‘real’ gun in his hand, a .30-06 semi-automatic rifle. Hodges tossed him an extra clip or two and he caught them, nodding his thanks. Only eight rounds in each clip, he had to reload the M1 more often than the 30-round Thompson. He also had to ‘aim’ the rifle, rather than ‘spray and pray,’ as with the tommy gun, but the M1 gave him more control over where each round ended up.
Gripping the wood stock, his trigger finger pushing the safety off, he began to sight targets. Catching a couple of enemy soldiers making their way across the street, he fired twice. Both contorted and fell, relieved of the burden of having to defend the Third Reich any longer.
Moffitt, firing in two or three second bursts, slipped across the street with the intention of finding his driver. The fighting was still heavy, the street littered with bodies, some alive, some not. Gratified, he found Tully on his feet and shepherding women and children out of firing range and into the alleys between their homes and shops.
Then out of the corner of his eye, he saw a stealthy German making ready to shoot an old Arab in the back as he too helped move folks to safety. Turning, he fired. The private never knew what hit him, only that it was painful and explosive.
“A regular donnybrook!” he called out, catching Tully’s ear.
“What’s that?” cried Tully, a toddler in one arm and another clinging to his pants leg, somehow moving along with him.
“An Irish free-for-all!”
“If you say so, Doc.” Tully shook his head. When would he learn not to ask Doc questions when he really didn’t want to know the answer?
Hitch had long ago awakened out of his astonishment and picked up an MP40 from the hands of a German who no longer needed it. He began spraying the remainder of its 32-round magazine at other Jerry soldiers who got in his way. He joined Troy in the street, who by this time had run out of clips for his M1 and had himself picked up a Schmeisser, the same as Hitch’s, a gun that felt ‘artificial’ in his hands. It worked well enough though.
After quite a while, the street fighting and cries of dying men settled down. Only a few Germans were left. Since the Allies didn’t like to see any prisoners put to death, the Arabs left these men alone, while the medics moved among them too, as well as their own.
Moffitt and Tully returned, greeted Hitch and found Troy in his element of kicking corpses to make sure they continued to be corpses. It had been known for some of the Germans to play dead, only to rise up and kill with their last breath.
Seeing Troy’s arm coated in now-dried blood, Moffitt hailed one of the medics over who, like a wound-up figurine, methodically began to clean the wound with iodine and dress it. It was a wonder that the ever-active Troy stood still for this.
Before the day was out, all of the Rats had been seen to. Moffitt got a dressing over his eyes. Tully’s bruised arm was put back in a sling, and Troy’s ribs, from where the beam had initially hit him, were taped and no longer threatening to tear him two. And, lastly, Hitch was given a hero’s welcome with lots of water and some sunburn gel.
Travers, the base commander—whose back was only bruised, not broken—had been moved to a more comfortable cot in the infirmary. At a small supper of rations in his office, Hitch told the others about his astonishing meeting in the desert.
As if it was a night camp in the desert, instead of a wrecked HQ, he sat cross-legged on the floor. “I was in no shape to go on,” he said. “My canteen was empty and I was completely tapped-out. I couldn’t have gone on one more mile.”
Trying to use a can opener with his good hand on a can of ‘mystery’ meat, Tully asked, “What happened next?”
“Well, I was captured by Dietrich and brought back to Biddah in the captain’s Kubelwagen.”
“You just think you saw him,” said Troy, gobbling down some meat and potatoes. “You must’ve seen a mirage.”
“Sarge, if I’m alone in the desert, in need of help, he’s the last person I’d want to see.”
Everyone laughed. Smiling broadly, Tully agreed. “Not when you could dream up a pretty nurse!”
“I didn’t dream him up!” Hitch took over the job Tully was trying to do and opened the can for him, shoving it back at him with some force. Tully continued smiling. “He actually wanted me to go back to his base with him, and become a POW.”
“Why didn’t you take him up on his offer?” Moffitt asked. “Why come back here?” The question caught everyone by surprise. Moffitt was ever the voice of reason, and that sounded reasonable.
“And miss all this fun? Not on your life, Doc!”
That broke everybody up. All three of their lives had depended on Hitch’s returning, on his getting outside help, mirage or no mirage. Just then, a panting, red-faced convoy trooper raced across the broken wall and stopped in his tracks before ‘crashing’ the party.
“There’s a man out there, Sgt. Troy, with a truck-load of supplies. He’s in one of those funny-looking German cars with the tire on the hood!”
“Slow down, private. One more time?” Troy asked.
“A German in a car, leading a truck. He told the gate guard it was a load of supplies for the Arabs and they sent me.”
“You ran all the way?” asked Moffitt. Though his eyes were bandaged, there was nothing wrong with his ears. He could hear the man wheezing, the great gulps of breath he was taking in. But he understood. After the battle they had all fought, the private had to be more than a little excited to see a Kubelwagen again.
Ignoring Moffitt, Troy threw his empty can and spoon down. He stood up in a crooked way and unsnapped the holster carrying his service weapon, asking, “What does he want?”
“Just to give us the supplies, Sarge. We saw a white flag so we didn’t shoot at him.”
“My mirage, Sarge!”
Moffitt could imagine the look that Troy cast at Hitch.
“Hitch,” said Troy, slapping his holster with his hand, “we’ll go check this out.”
“I’ve got to see this!” Moffitt said, preparing to remove his bandage. “I’ll go with you, Troy.”
“Moffitt, you and Tully stay here. I need someone in this part of town to watch the office.”
Saying nothing, but visibly disappointed, Moffitt stopped trying to work the bandage loose. Troy and Hitch followed the wound-up private out over the bricks of the broken wall, while Tully picked up Moffitt’s own can of mystery meat and fumbled with the can opener again.
“Do you want me to feed it to you?” he asked in a normal tone of voice. He wasn’t prepared for Moffitt’s ‘candid’ reaction.
“Try that, and I’ll see you court-martialed.”
“No, seriously, Doc.”
“Seriously?” Moffitt swallowed a little before he said, “You did very well out there, Tully. I almost lost it quite when I saw that little girl, but you held it together. I’m as proud of you as I would have been of my own brother.”
“Back home,” said Tully, choking up a little, too, “there’s always room at the table for one more. Remember that, Doc, if this war’s ever over. Now, do you want help with this?”
He held up the opened can, which Moffitt couldn’t see.
“Are you holding up that can again?”
“I am.”
“What if Dietrich shows up, with Troy? He can’t see you spoon-feeding me.” Moffitt began to undo his bandage again, but a voice from the collapsed side of the room suddenly restrained his hands. The man who owned it stepped through the rubble.
“I’m here, Sgt. Moffitt. Bearing gifts.”
“Captain Dietrich! How did you know about Biddah?” asked Moffitt, stunned. “We thought you were only a figment of a delusional young mind, or sunstroke.”
“Thanks, Doc!” exclaimed Hitch from out of nowhere. Moffitt tilted his head to the sound, a sound again replaced by Dietrich’s voice.
“I caught up with my convoy and turned one of the trucks around. No matter who won, I was prepared to offer help.”
“He found out who won alright, and now he wants to talk about a prisoner exchange,” said Troy, also coming into the room. “For food and medical supplies. Looks like we’re all going to need them.”
Using Dietrich’s radio, Troy called in to the nearest Allied base for ambulances and additional troops, after which Dietrich went back to his own base at al-Qarah. In his Kubelwagen, he was leading a couple of trucks of prisoners and wounded, if they could be moved, that is. His report to HQ would detail Major Kurst’s actions against Biddah, base and all—and not in the most heroic terms.
The Arabs, who seemed to be back in control of their town now, had been guarding a few of the German prisoners. When Troy had asked for them back, an elder stepped forward and said, “Take them. It’s your war, your prisoners.”
Moffitt translated, and all seemed to go well except for a few discreet killings by the younger Arabs, before Troy and his MPs could stop them. The field hospital, cleared of rubble, was a safe haven, keeping the wounded out of harm’s way. It was the only time Troy could recall when being wounded was actually a safer bet than being whole.
In the coming days, life for everyone, such as it was, began to fall into place again. The base sputtered to life again, with the medics and nurses very busy until the ambulances arrived.
The Arabs buried their own dead and started to rebuild, keeping the mud-brick makers as busy as ever, and in due time two jeeps sped out across the desert, leaving Biddah in the rearview mirrors. One was driven by a man in a sling, chewing on a matchstick, and the other by a gum-chomping, sunburned guy in a red kepi. Two others, bandaged and taped in the passenger seats, kept trying to tell them to go slow.
Only the white dust devils known in Arabic as djinn swirling across the desert sands heeded their words.
***The End***
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