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The Fortunes of War Raid
by tallsunshine12
Chapter 1 Crash!
At 0900 hours, the Spartan fixed-wing airplane had left Benina Airfield, twenty miles south of Benghazi, carrying a British envoy to Harfar, an Arab town about one hundred and twenty miles away. He intended to participate in a meeting with Arab tribesman over new land leases for Allied airfields and bases. Also aboard were Sgts. Troy and Moffitt, of the Long Range Desert Group, and the lone pilot.
Flying low over the dunes and bluffs, the Spartan hoped to avoid a radar detection unit newly installed at the German base at Madros Well.
Like a ferry boat across the desert, at less than thirty feet long, with a single, two-bladed prop, the Spartan seated only four. Two seats, including the pilot's, were up front. In the cramped cabin, the back bench passengers, Moffitt and the envoy, Lt. Roger Chambers, of His Majesty's Diplomatic Service, could reach up and tap the pilot on the shoulder. Troy, in the front seat, opposite the pilot, was close enough to the dash to read the instruments. Two sets of windows on either side of the plane, plus two wedge-shaped ones, framed the cabin's tight quarters.
Neither of the sergeants had anything to do with the envoy's mission to the Arab leaders, or with the briefcase of papers he clung to so tenaciously at his side. They were returning from Benghazi to rendezvous with their jeep drivers at a dry wadi about ninety miles away. Troy's idea to take the flight had been to save wear and tear on the jeeps—and on Tully and Hitch—and to save valuable petrol. The Spartan would land on a hard road surface at the rendezvous and take off again with just the envoy aboard.
Troy and Moffitt had gone to Benghazi to take Moffitt to an ear specialist. He had suffered a close-hitting mortar shell in one of their convoy attacks and had had some hearing issues afterward. Both Tully and Hitch thought he was faking it, trying to get some extra R & R, but Troy knew better and was worried about him enough to get both of them leave from duty. At the base hospital in Benghazi, Moffitt had been told to 'avoid' loud noises for a week or two to see if his hearing improved. Telling a desert rat who manned a .50 caliber machine gun that he had to stay away from loud noises was almost comical. But these were doctor's orders, so after meeting up with Tully and Hitch, Troy planned to return to their own base at Ras Tanura to allow Moffitt some much-needed rest.
However, the Germans had other thoughts. Slipping into Allied territory with two half-tracks and a staff car, or Kubelwagen, in which he rode, Hauptmann Dietrich had positioned the half-tracks, each equipped with a 20 mm anti-aircraft 'flak' gun, on the expected flight path of the Spartan. His orders were clear. He was not to allow the envoy, Chambers, to reach the Arab meeting, where it was likely the tribesmen would cede some of their vast lands in that part of Libya to the Allies for bases and airfields.
One or two cannon shots should bring it down, he thought.
As the plane flew into the airspace flanked by the half-tracks, two shells, each with a timed fuse, burst out and one after the other exploded in the vicinity of the Spartan. A thousand whizzing metal fragments in each—flak—shot into the plane like a detonating fragmentation grenade, smashing glass and tearing holes in the fuselage. The twin explosions and the 'iron rain' forced the plane down onto a ground littered with large boulders over a wide field.
As it hit a truck-sized piece of rock, the left-hand wing—on the pilot's side—sheared off, hanging by no more than a few wires and a couple of bent struts, along with the pilot's door right over the wing. A large gash opened in the plane's side, sending waves of sand into the cabin as the aircraft skittered a few hundred yards to an abrupt stop.
Like a dinosaur sixty-five million years earlier, it lay on its side in its dying throes. The smoking, fiery wreck wheezed and sputtered out its life in the sand.
Troy coughed in the dead silence of burned, electric air. The twin midair blasts, the fissuring of the plane on the rocks, and the sudden stop in the sand had all conspired to make his head ring with pain. Every inch of him hurt. Sprains? Check. Pulls? Check. Bruises? Too many to count. Even in his safety harness, he had been flung forward when the shells burst and hit his forehead on the dash, his left eye partially closed as a result.
Sickened by petrol vapors, with his clothes torn and blackened, and well-sprinkled with glass and metal, he climbed out of his shoulder strap and belt. Gathering what remained of his strength, he turned to the pilot, still slumped in his seat.
Leaning over, he fought to loosen the pilot's own harness. Turning once as he worked, he glanced back at Moffitt and the envoy. Covered in a tan blanket—sand—neither man was moving. Each had been ripped out of his own seat belt and tossed in a heap of arms and legs on the floor of the aircraft. Unable at first to decide who was who, Troy then saw Moffitt's black beret. It had fallen to his chest and lay there, identifying him. Chambers' hand still clung to his briefcase.
At last he freed the pilot and pushing himself up, moved towards where the pilot's door had been—the only door in the plane. Breathing the better air once outside, he fell to his knees on what was left of the wing and got a good hold of the pilot's flight jacket. The man, over six foot tall and limp as a broken doll, was heavy—it was all Troy could do to haul him out of the jagged opening. The sand, too, which had been scooped in through the gash as the plane speeded to a stop, impeded his efforts.
His vision murky, he pulled him down to the desert and rolled him onto his side, keeping the sun out of his face. Then with circles of soot ringing his eyes, he looked back into the cabin.
"Moffitt," he said in a low, fume-choked voice.
He struggled back up and again crawled over what remained of the sheared-off wing and through the gash. Once inside, he dug through the accumulated sand with his bare hands, throwing it off to either side of the two unconscious men.
Finally, he had his friend free of it, and with one of his arms around his neck, he turned and began to inch his way out a second time. Once out of the plane, both men rolled off the wing and fell into the sand. Troy, shaking his head to clear it, got hold of Moffitt's desert jacket in both hands and dragged him as far from the plane as he could before his strength gave out. Laying him on his own face in the sand, he turned again. One last man to rescue. The envoy, Chambers.
He reentered the plane, every nerve straining to refuse him, and not before cutting his lower leg on a piece of metal in the doorway. Brushing off the sudden trickle of blood just below the knee, he crawled back to Chambers and felt his pulse, both in his neck and wrist. No sign of a beating heart. The envoy was dead. Troy had to leave him in the plane, all of his own force gone. It was as good a place as any to leave a dead man.
He fought his way a third time onto the nearly severed wing, rolled off and flung himself on his back in the sand, and then lay, dead asleep.
Sometime later, he woke to feel a certain jostling of his arm. With what sight he had, he looked up and realized he wasn't alone. A lean face hovered over him and he knew in an instant that he was looking at the man who had brought the plane down with the two flak shells—Hauptmann Dietrich. How long had it taken the German captain to find him? To catch up to the plane he had destroyed? Or rather, how had long had he, Troy, been lying there, unaware of his presence?
Suddenly, water ran into his eyes, washing out the smoke, the glass, a long-fingered hand guiding it. Still barely able to see, with sooty tears running down his face, he could just make out the small, flat German canteen and Dietrich's hand holding it. Then the canteen found its way to his lips and he gulped at the water, feeling it soothe his burning throat.
"Moffitt?" he asked hoarsely.
Sitting back on his heels, Dietrich didn't at first reply, then he gathered his own courage for what he had to say. He didn't find this easy. "I'm afraid, Sgt. Troy, he's dead. My driver, Pvt. Hilfer, is with him now. There's no life in him."
Troy managed to sit up with Dietrich's help. "He's dead? Are you lying or somethin'?"
Dietrich understood enough about himself to know that he wouldn't lie to a man in Troy's condition. "I'm telling you the truth," he said. "He has no pulse, none. He's gone."
"He can't be … dead," Troy protested, turning and looking over that way, where he had laid Moffitt, but his vision was watery and unclear. "He just can't!"
Gasping out these words, he broke Dietrich's hold and fought his way on hands and knees over to his friend. Once beside him, he felt for a pulse in Moffitt's neck. Looking at his still face, he had to admit that Dietrich was right. Moffitt was gone, his beating heart was no more, and he, Troy, who thought he could solve anything, couldn't think of a way to bring him back. He laid a hand on Moffitt's chest and dropped his head for a moment, getting ready to face Dietrich when he looked up again.
Fighting his way to wobbly legs, he asked, "What for? Why'd you shoot us down?"
"The envoy, Chambers, my orders were to stop him—by the way, Troy, where is he?"
"Dead, in the plane. Go see for yourself," Troy replied in disgust. He reached out a hand to a boulder behind him. It was burning to the touch and he pulled his hand away.
"I don't have to," Dietrich said. "I'll take your word for it."
That angered the desert rat. "My word—" he began, a frenzy of rage pushing out every other emotion right then.
In a burst of raw hatred for this cold enemy of his, Troy threw himself upon Dietrich with all his might, aiming a right cross at his chin and toppling the proud officer into the sand. Flying upon him, he grabbed up his uniform shirt and pommelled his face with another blow. Dietrich, as strong at that moment as Troy was weak, rolled him off, came to his knees, and raised his own fist. But then he stopped, holding his clenched hand in midair, but not following through with the punch. With Troy's obvious head injuries, it might have killed him.
Something else, though, something of honor had taken hold of Hans Dietrich and he realized that he couldn't hit a man already so bruised and battered and devastated by the loss of his friend as Troy was. He looked down at him in unmitigated pity, but Troy wasn't making it easy for him to be so noble.
Seeing Dietrich's conflict and hesitation, he laughed slightly. "Go ahead, finish it, Dietrich. You know you want to."
Instead, Dietrich said nothing, did nothing. His fist unclenched slowly, its knuckles white. He got off his knees while at the same time pulling Troy up with him. When they stood face to face, Troy shrugged off Dietrich's hand on his arm.
Dietrich smirked and said, "My mission has been achieved. The envoy to the Arab meeting has been eliminated. There's nothing further for me to do."
"Except bury Moffitt," Troy sputtered. He looked over at Pvt. Kurt Hilfer, Dietrich's driver, and then up at the two half-tracks and the six or seven men on the top of the rocky ridge above the plane. "Or is that too much for your men to handle?"
"The pilot—is he dead as well?"
"The pilot!" Troy exclaimed. "I'd forgotten about him."
Dietrich turned to his driver, speaking in German. "Well, Private? How is he?"
Replying in the same language, Hilfer said, "He's still with us, Herr Hauptmann. Though maybe not for long."
Dietrich nodded and turned from the young man back to Troy. "We've got to be moving along now. You'll come with us, of course, both of you."
"Not before we bury the two dead men."
"I've thought about that. I'll let you radio your own drivers—I assume they have a radio in the jeeps?" Troy nodded, suspecting something, and Dietrich went on. "Don't think that I'll lay a trap for them. As I told you, Sergeant, my mission is complete."
"What about the radio?"
"You can send your drivers the coordinates of this plane wreck. When they come, they can bury the two bodies. But right now, we have to get the pilot some medical attention. I'm not hard-hearted enough to let him die, too."
"Just Moffitt and Chambers?"
"Fortunes of war, Sergeant. You should know about those by now—you've taught me those lessons often enough!"
Troy laughed bitterly, shaking his head over Dietrich's very correct statement. Through numerous encounters, Troy's hard lessons had driven into the German captain a healthy respect for the way war sometimes favors one, and then the other. This time, fortune had evidently decided to give Hauptmann Dietrich another turn at the wheel.
Taking his arm again, Dietrich helped Troy climb to the top of the rocky ridge above the crash site, guiding his steps the entire way. Once on top, he had one of his men set up the radio for him. After two or three futile tries, Troy found the correct frequency and heard Hitch's voice come through over his headset. Just before speaking, he took a deep breath, realizing that whatever he had to say it was going to be hard for Tully and Hitch to bear.
"Listen up, fellows. There's been an accident, a crash. Over."
"Say again, Sarge. A crash? You and Moffitt?" said Hitch. "Over."
Troy swallowed hard and felt he almost couldn't speak. Emotion, raw emotion, was gripping his insides. He clenched the mic tighter as a shudder, caused by pain and heartache, circulated through his shocked system.
As a palliative, Dietrich handed him the canteen he had been holding all the while and Troy took a deep drink of it, sand mingling with the water in his mouth, but terribly thirsty, he swallowed it anyway.
"A crash, Hitch. Moffitt's—" He looked up at Dietrich, his eyes anguished. "Moffitt's been hurt. I'm okay, but I need you here to … to do some work for me. I won't be here when you arrive. Over."
"We're at the rendezvous point, Sarge," Hitch said. "We were expecting the plane to land in about thirty minutes. Where are you? What are the coordinates? Over."
Dietrich provided a map. As his eyes still burned, Troy shook his head. He couldn't read it, so Dietrich took the mic and headset from him and relayed the coordinates himself. At the other end there was instant silence, and it lasted for a long time. The voice was one they knew, but it sent chills down their spines to hear it again. Dietrich!
"Sarge?" asked Tully, also appropriating the mic and 'phones on his end. "Over."
"No, Hauptmann Dietrich." Dietrich didn't know which of the two jeep drivers was on the radio now, but even without the headphones on and hearing only a faint sound through them, Troy could tell the unmistakable southern drawl of Tully's voice. "Did you get the coordinates? Over."
Again, there was a stunned silence, but it didn't last as long this time. Tully spoke up again, saying, "I wrote them down, sir, just as you gave them." He repeated them back. "Could you put Sgt. Troy back on, sir? Over."
Dietrich handed the mic and headset back to Troy.
"Troy here," Troy said, putting one side of the headset over his left ear again. "You're sure you know where you're going? Over."
"Hitch is looking now. We'll find you, Sarge. Over."
"No, not me. Like I said, I won't be here. You must not delay getting here. Over."
Tully had the good sense not to ask outright if Capt. Dietrich was holding their leader prisoner, but he and Hitch suspected as much. Nor did he ask what was burning in both of their young minds—what was this 'work' Sarge had for them? What did it involve?
To Hitch, Tully whispered, "Somehow, I don't think both of them survived." Hitch nodded. To Troy, Tully said, "We'll do our best, Sarge."
"Good! Troy, out!"
He gave the radio things back to Dietrich's radioman and turned back to the captain for further instruction. Wondering why he hadn't done it before, Dietrich took this opportunity to liberate Troy's sidearm from its holster and his long knife from Troy's right boot. He stuck the gun in his own belt and handed the knife to Hilfer, who looked like he didn't know what to do with it, eventually stashing it in his own boot. He tried not to cut himself.
"Get into the car, Sergeant." Dietrich indicated his Kubelwagen. Unassisted, Troy got in the back and sat waiting and watching the proceedings. Dietrich handed him the canteen and he drank again, not even tasting the water this time. His mind was so immersed in his loss of his friend and the Rat Patrol's second-in-command that he could have drunk battery acid and not known it.
While Dietrich's men helped the pilot up the rocky slope, the German captain motioned to two others to take Moffitt's body back into the plane and out of the sandy wind. It would be his 'shelter' until Tully and Hitch got there in the jeeps. Perhaps it would be his tomb if they never arrived.
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About twenty miles away, in a dry wadi bounded on two sides by high, scrubby dunes, Hitch and Tully leaned against one of the jeeps in rapt silence, Tully still holding the radio headset and mic in his hands.
"Something bad's happened to them," said Hitch. "I can feel it."
"One of them didn't make it. We know which one."
Tully's voice was firm, but it was hiding an emotional volcano ripping him apart inside. He'd grown to like, even admire, Doc, as they called him, the tall, well-educated Englishman who had come into their world with the death of their other gunner, Sgt. Cotter. Always ready with an apt phrase, finding a dry humor in almost any situation, Sgt. Jack Moffitt had become more than a mere gunner—he was now brother, teacher, friend. Those were words, along with many others like them, that the two young privates would use to describe him. And now he was gone.
Tully had a sudden insight into the 'work' that Troy wanted them to do. "Hitch," he began, choking up, "Sarge wants us to bury Moffitt. For some reason, he can't do it himself. Probably Dietrich."
"Let's go," said Hitch, flying over to his jeep. He got in, pulled his sand goggles up over his wire-rimmed glasses and, pushing the start button on the floor, put the jeep in gear.
Tully secured the radio by its strap in the back of his jeep, then just like Hitch he pulled his goggles off his neck and fitted them into place over his eyes. Starting the engine, he followed Hitch's lead as the two jeeps left the area in a spray of sand.
The miles flew by as they headed for the coordinates given them by none other than Hauptmann Dietrich, Captain Dietrich to them. How was he mixed up in all of this? Did he see the crash and come to take advantage of it, to capture any survivors, in this case Troy?
Tully, Moffitt's usual driver, had once heard his English sergeant quote Winston Churchill about Russia's unpredictability in the war. Russia was "a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma." In Tully's young, but not necessarily naïve mind, that phrase of Churchill's could well describe Capt. Hans Dietrich.
Sometimes he helped them, and then at other times he'd arrange for them to be shot, hanged or sent off to a transit camp for processing as POWs. The man couldn't be called untrustworthy, as he was honorable in his way, but he was fighting for two opposing things at once: for Germany, on the one hand, which included all that the Third Reich stood for, even all of its evil, and, on the other, to keep his own inner 'house of cards' intact by not always fighting too closely for it.
He was no fool, and he could be ruthless, but he didn't usually go along with the Nazis. His own peace of mind prevented him. That made him unpredictable in the extreme. What would he be like when they next encountered him—the good German soldier, a captain of the Heer, or the army component of the Wehrmacht, or a just man with a conscience?
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Over fifty miles away lay Dietrich's base at Madros Well. Without further ado, he headed back there with his two GI prisoners, one bleeding from the mouth signifying possible internal injuries, the other dazed and shocked by not only the crash, but also by the loss of his friend.
Dietrich's cumbersome half-tracks were moving along at a snail's pace of only about 30 mph, while he knew that the two Willys jeeps would be trekking along at nearly sixty. There was a surfaced road for a while past the site of the plane crash, but no such road existed after that. Nothing but sand. It would be a hard slog back to Madros Well.