Chapter 2
With his Walther P38 drawn, Dietrich ran out into the square and scanned the rooftops looking for a target to shoot at, especially the two members of the Patrol he suspected had blown up the building housing the ammo. He had already seen what had happened to his Kubelwagen.
Not seeing anyone he could avenge himself on, he loped over to where Pvt. Kurt Hilfer, his driver, was valiantly trying to straighten a bent antenna, as if that tiny effort would put the crumpled Kubelwagen back on the road again.
As if he were buying it, Dietrich kicked one of its tires. "Not much of it left, I see."
"All done for, Herr Hauptmann." Was there a note of melancholy in Hilfer's voice? He and that Kubelwagen were close. "I might as well make soup cans out of it.
Imagining his beloved Kubelwagen reduced to a collection of steel cans for holding tomato soup, Dietrich's exhausted laugh was loud but brief.
"Find the medic and bring him to me," he said. That is, find him if he wasn't dead already. "I want a count of the dead and wounded. See who he can spare to dig graves, too."
In the slippery Saharan sand, digging graves at night did not rank high with a soldier in Rommel's Afrika Korps, but it sure beat being the one whose grave it was!
"Jawohl, Herr Hauptmann!" replied Hilfer. Dietrich didn't require salutes from his men, so Hilfer turned on his heel, still angry, wishing he could go out and put 'paid' to the Rat Patrol once and for all.
Reentering the partially collapsed HQ, Dietrich looked up through the broken roof at the stars. He stepped over fallen timbers, timbers long-preserved in the dry desert air. He headed for the radio. Still at his desk, the radio operator put in a call to Hauptmann Reinhold Klauss. Klauss headed up the Panzer company on its way there to resupply.
"That's right, Klauss," Dietrich said into the mic. "If they're going back to their base, they should be heading west, your way. Stop them whatever you have to do. I wish you luck."
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Troy and Moffitt headed out onto the desert and to the hidden recess in the rocks where the jeeps were. In a few minutes their drivers joined them, stowing their rifles in the fender holsters and Tully's stovepipe in the rear of his and Moffitt's jeep. Slipping behind the wheels, pushing the white starter buttons, and getting in gear, Tully and Hitch tore off across the desert.
How long before Dietrich mounted a pursuit? Or the tank company spotted them?
A storm blowing out of the west caked their clothes and faces with sand as they drove. Tying bandannas over their mouths, they pulled their goggles up against the fine grit. Sand was hell, especially at night, but it might also prove to be good cover.
His voice rising over the wind, and in some alarm, Hitch asked, "What's that column doing?"
Off in the distance, the lights of the tank company could be seen heading towards town, a bit early for its expected ETA. On their present course, they would cross at right angles to the patrol, but then they began to turn to meet it head on.
"They've spotted us," said Troy, lowering his binoculars and putting his goggles back in place. "At any rate, they know we're here."
Two Panzer IV tanks, one troop truck, and two half-tracks were indeed driving their way. Even with a 'mask' fitted over their headlights, the jeeps still put out a faint glow. Hitch spared some backhanded praise for the German spotter.
"The eyes of the man who can spot us in a dust storm at night should be put in a museum."
He was next startled out of his wits (and wit) by a shell from a 75 mm gun. It blew up a boulder above them, small rocks and shale flying out and raining down on them.
"Whew!" Hitch cried, lowering his arm from over his head. "Any more like that and I won't have to shave for a week."
"You don't shave now," quipped Troy, aiming to get his 'goat' as he was the youngest Rat. "Give 'er all she's got. Let's outrun those 75's."
Practically impossible. The all-out wind slowed the jeeps down, allowing the tank column to begin catching up. In about a mile of slogging through this swirling fog of bruising sand, with the behemoth column dogging their six, Troy ordered, "Over to the right, Hitch!"
On the right, narrow fissures or wadis, about a jeep wide, ran down to where the jeeps were from a larger watercourse on the plateau above. Hitch pulled over and Tully and Moffitt followed suit, though with the spinning sand devils, they could barely see Hitch's action.
Troy slipped out before his jeep came to a standstill and ran over to Moffitt. Pulling his bandanna down, he yelled, "Let's split up! Tully, drive through one of these cuts and keep going until you can use the radio to order an airstrike."
"What about you two, Troy?" Moffitt asked. "What'll you be doing?"
"I was here in '41 with the Australian 9th. This cut narrows in about fifty yards. A jeep can get through, but not a half-track or a tank."
"If you're wrong, they'll have you boxed-in good, Troy."
"I'm not wrong." Troy sounded if anything certain of that. "Take off, you two!"
"Will do! See you in Tal Yata," Moffitt called as Tully put the jeep in gear again and took off to find another 'cut.'
Troy retook his seat and motioned Hitch to continue up the wadi. The rocks protected the men from the force of the wind, so Troy took off his goggles and wiped them on his sleeve. He slung them back around his neck, but didn't put them back on. He'd need to use his unfettered eyes tonight if he was going to lead Hitch through this narrowing gap.
In his own field glasses, Klauss spotted both of the jeeps disappear into the rocks. He spoke in his mic to his two half-track crews to pursue. Half-tracks, smaller than tanks, might stand a chance of catching the jeeps.
As the rocks began to close in on Troy and Hitch, Moffitt and Tully emerged into a large riverbed, one whose waters had created the system of wadis, but now were dry as a bone. Tully pulled to an abrupt stop—seeing something in the headlights.
"An RAF Lancaster," Moffitt said, gazing at the downed fighter. "I wonder what battle it had taken part in?"
"One it didn't survive," said Tully. Morose-feeling, he shivered, noting the wind had picked up again once they were out of the sky-high rocks.
No time to call Tal Yata for an airstrike. The tailgating half-track emerged from another wadi a bit further down. Moffitt motioned Tully to drive to the rear of the wrecked plane where the wind had piled up sand in a U-shaped crest like a barchan, a common formation of the Sahara.
He climbed up behind the fifty and signaled Tully to drive up the crest of sand to the top of the plane, giving Moffitt an almost aerial view of the desert flats below. Tully gunned the engine, springing the jeep forward to the top of the barchan.
Its lights just visible, the half-track drove into range. Moffitt began firing. Spraying bullets in bursts of three or four, he eliminated two men right off, including the half-track's machine gunner. The driver, perhaps the only man left of the crew, backed up and tried to run. Tully knew what to do. He floored the gas pedal and the jeep leaped from the crest, airborne for a few seconds, and landed hard on the desert floor.
Once alongside the fleeing half-track, Moffitt lobbed a grenade into the driver's compartment, killing him instantly. Then the gas tank blew, sending flames skyrocketing. Whoever the tank commander was, he was down one half-track.
Speeding out of shrapnel range, Tully came to a stop so they could look back on their work. Grim work, and neither man was smiling over it. None of the Rats gloated over what they had to do to win the war.
In the smaller wadi, in the pitch dark, Hitch's heart was in his throat. The distance between the walls was less than six feet now. The rough, uneven rocks even had the appearance of closing in altogether.
"A little to the left, Hitch." Troy's hand gestured that way.
Hitch, who could only see Troy's grimly-set teeth, looked over at him as if he was mad. "There's no right or left, Sarge, not anymore. If we get stuck in here, the half-track'll pick us off."
"I know, but just a little to the left." Hitch obliged and the jeep just missed scraping the rocks on the right. He decided to listen to Troy from then on.
The half-track and its crew had the choice to back out of the wadi, if they could, or continue on and risk damaging their vehicle beyond repair. Its crew chose the latter, not wishing to confront Klauss's feisty temper if the jeep escaped.
The half-track crept forward, and to say that the rocks scraped the dull yellow Afrika Korps paint off the sides was an understatement. Once it was well and truly stuck, the crew wished they'd listened to their better angels and not gone in further.
Troy climbed up to the fifty, and tried to spot the half-track, but most of it was hidden around a bend in the wadi. He and Hitch could hear a guttural noise as the vehicle tried to go forward against solid rock. Finally it coughed out and he slipped back to his seat, motioning Hitch on.
They somehow squeezed through, and Hitch's nomadic heart retreated to his chest again. He blew out, and looking over at Troy, saw in the stars' faint light that he was pale. Another close 'shave.'
Rolling out into the dry riverbed, they saw the same plane Moffitt and Tully had, the smoking half-track, and the jeep. The wind whipping his voice away again, Troy gestured to it.
"Well, it looks like you've had a piece of the action!" he yelled over as Hitch drove up.
Moffitt's voice rose, too. "What about yours, Troy? Did it get stuck as you'd hoped?"
"Boy, did it ever!" Hitch answered for him. "Just like a girl in a too-tight girdle!"
Tully smiled and shook his head at his younger counterpart. "I can't believe you said that."
Moffitt's hearty laugh split the night. "Well, let's make tracks before that girl gets out of her girdle and rejoins the tanks," he said.
"First things first," Troy countered, after taking a swig of water to rinse the sand out of his mouth. "We've got to destroy that town once and for all. Tully, radio HQ to call a strike. You know the coordinates."
The jeeps moved off to a quiet group of boulders to be out of the worst of the wind, which was even then dying down. Tully made the call. As the sun began to rise, the roar of two fighter-bombers, both Lancasters like the wrecked plane in the old riverbed, disturbed the peace.
Having left the scene about a half-hour before the planes arrived, all that Troy and his fellow Rats could see in the shadowy distance was a bright orange lighting up the sky as the bombers dropped high explosive shells onto the town. The blaze lingered until it was overcome by the dawn.
"I wonder if Dietrich got out," murmured Moffitt, gazing raptly at the still-glowing sky, the new day's sun all but washing it out. The four men were standing at their jeeps, gazing skyward. Three of them were smoking. Only Moffitt wasn't.
Tully stamped out his cigarette and toed it into the sand. "It's for sure one thing didn't," he said, a bit overly solemn, almost giving the joke away. When everyone looked over at him, expecting some mournful tale, he said, "His Kubelwagen."
30
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