Alamein: The turning point of World War Two. Iain Gale
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them would have to die before the lord of battles granted them their victory.
TWO
2.00 p.m. Just behind the Allied front line Captain Hugh Samwell
He had been lying in this position for almost eight hours now and one thing was abundantly clear. Soon, no matter what happened, he was going to have to take a piss. The hated order had come through the previous evening and issuing it to the men had been an onerous task: Strictly no movement after dawn’. It had produced a predictable collective groan. Even more predictably some wag had yelled, ‘Lucky Dawn’. The CSM had cautioned him, but there were no charges on the eve of battle. And anyway, thought Samwell, that sort of thing was good for morale. Besides, sending up army-speak was a field sport. But for all the levity, Samwell and every man in his platoon knew that when the army said ‘strictly’ it meant it. No movement. He wondered whether their people at home would ever hear about that, would ever really understand what it actually meant.
He shifted again and eased the cramp in his leg. His bladder felt like a football about to burst. Looking around the slit trench for the tenth, perhaps the twentieth time he saw nothing that might act as a makeshift urinal. Then, suddenly it came to him; the water bottles. Samwell dug gingerly around in his pack which lay between his legs and after a while his hand alighted on a familiar glass shape. It was an old whisky bottle; one of two he had retrieved at the mess and filled with water. Reluctantly he opened it. His dry mouth ached for a drink but he realized that even the movement of raising the reflective bottle to his lips might attract the attention of an enemy observer. He reverted to his first thought and taking care not to make any conspicuous movement managed to get it on its side and gently let the contents run out. The noise brought fresh torment to his aching bladder. He urged the water out: Come on, come on, empty you bugger. Finally, when he thought that enough had gone, he managed to manoeuvre the bottle towards his trousers and, unbuttoning his fly, carefully moved until he was just in the right position in the neck. The relief was palpable. A feeling without parallel in his memory.
For a moment, as he buttoned-up and stowed the full bottle deep in the sand of the trench, Samwell was conscious of the absurdity of it all. Here he was, a grown man, an officer in a proud Highland regiment, lying on his back in a hole in the desert with his dick inserted into a bottle. He almost laughed out loud but managed to stifle it. War was like that, he thought. So unnatural that it was bound to create situations which even an artist or poet would find hard to imagine. Much of it was farcical. And thank God for that. They had all learned to laugh in the face of death.
He took out the book he had just received in the post: They Die with their Boots Clean. It was a novel about the Coldstream Guards. Its title hardly seemed to make it appropriate reading for the circumstances, but his wife knew only too well what he liked to read and he thought of her kindness in sending it to him. He reached inside his battledress and took out the precious photograph that had come with the book, of his wife and their two small children. Allan was three now and little Inge only two. He looked closely at his wife, his darling Klara. Took care to take in the lines of her face and her eyes. Those deep blue eyes. Oh my darling Klara. He murmured silently: ‘Why did your countrymen have to make this war on us?’ His wife came from Cologne. He had met her there before the war and they had married quickly, two young people hopelessly in love. They had thought that at first they might settle in her home town. His German was passable and there were opportunities for talented engineers in the new Germany. Hitler’s Germany. But Klara had seen what was coming and wanted no part in it. So they had settled in Scotland, in a modest house at Dalmorglen Park in Stirling, a quiet residential cul-de-sac of new homes.
Samwell had had a good job before the army took him. Not bad at thirty-one to be a managing director. His company, Scottish Radio Industries in Denny, was a relatively new business producing wireless sets, but it was expanding and seemed to have a bright future. And the workers were a good bunch. Solid, dependable types with a keen work ethic. But then the war had come and in an instant their dreams, along with those of millions of others like them, had been fractured into a thousand fragments.
Samwell of course had been one of the first to get into it, as Klara had known he would be. He was already a soldier in the Territorials. Commissioned second lieutenant in January 1938, his army number was 73830. To answer the call and go permanent into the regulars had seemed only natural. They had been mobilized in August ’39.
Of course he’d been teased about his age at Aldershot. Even before he’d been old for an officer cadet. The younger men had called him ‘uncle’ as they did any of the older intake. He didn’t mind. They were good lads for the most part and his eight or ten years’ seniority won him a respect which they did not have for each other. He had revelled in the mess nights when the rooms seemed to sparkle with the light reflected from the regimental silver and they might have been fighting Victoria’s wars rather than this struggle against an inhuman enemy.
Soldiering came naturally to Samwell. He had been a good officer cadet at school at Glenalmond, and had been under an Argyll sergeant then. He himself wasn’t a Scot, of course. Born in Cheshire, in fact, just before the last war. Now though he found himself a lieutenant, acting captain now, in one of the proudest regiments of the British army, Princess Louise’s Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders. A Scottish regiment. A highland regiment. Perhaps, he thought, the coming battle would confirm his rank. He intended to make something of himself in the army. Well, once you were in you were in. Might as well give it everything you could, like anything in life. Even if afterwards he returned to the business in Denny, it would look good on the records, maybe even help his career in Civvy Street.
Samwell thought like a soldier now. His mind had entered into the army framework wholeheartedly and without restraint and the army had moulded him into an effective officer, a leader of men. Much of his job was however keeping records. Acres of paperwork. And all the everyday duties of the company officer: siting latrines, foot inspections, arranging sentry duty, pay parades, making sure there was sufficient ammo and rations, censoring letters and organizing games to keep the men occupied. At times he felt a little like a cross between a kindly schoolmaster and a local council official. And then there were the endless route marches, the fatigue, the sleepless nights. The desert brought its own problems: the great skin-searing khamsin sandstorms that ruined rations and ripped tents to shreds; skin sores, dysentery, jaundice and the ubiquitous flies. No sooner had you opened your mouth to take a bit of bread and jam or a fried egg, than it was covered with flies.
He tried to read some of the book, which strangely was written by a man with a German-sounding name, Gerald Kersh, who had apparently served as a guardsman himself. For the second time he wondered why they were fighting the Germans and how it all made sense. The book wasn’t so bad. A look at the men in one platoon of the Guards in our own times. A passage caught his eye: ‘We had discussed the retreat from Dunkirk. The Cockney, Bob Barker said: “But it was a bit of luck the sea was smooth anyway.” Hodge, opening one of his blue eyes, said: “Why, don’t ee’ see? The Lord God starched out his hand over that water. He said: ‘Now you hold still and let my children come away’.”’
He wondered whether God would be with them in the coming fight. God had always been with him. He thought of home. Of his father, Edward, the rector of a small church in Falkirk and his mother at work in their modest house, keeping up appearances even though the war had meant cuts in all directions. They had been so proud when he had been commissioned into the Argylls. They were the local regiment of course, with their HQ at Stirling Castle. How many hours had he spent in the regimental museum poring over the battle honours and the relics of past campaigns?
He loved the regiment. Klara often teased him about it: ‘Oh Hugh, I think that you must love your soldiers more than me. Men in skirts…’ Then he would laugh and feign anger and chase her around the ktichen, at last catching her and kissing her, checking all the time that the children were not near. God how he loved her. If only this could all be over and he could be back with her. With her in his arms. He tried to put her face from his thoughts. But once bidden, like a genie from the bottle, it would not go back. Not at least until his lovesick heart had had its fill.
He tried hard to concentrate on the matter in hand. But