Thanksgiving Truce
by tallsunshine12
Troy, up on the dune, lying flat on his belly, shifted the binoculars away from his eyes and dug out a bit of grit from one of them. He was looking at something strange, and he wanted to make sure he could see it clearly.
Out there, on the desert flats, one Kubelwagen drove along with three trucks behind it. No sign of an armored vehicle like a half-track or a tank anywhere. The Kubelwagen, a command car, wasn't armored, though the individuals riding in it might be. The trucks could be hiding arms underneath that canvas.
Troy and his unit of three men had been alerted by aerial recon that a convoy—of sorts—was making its way across the desert, destination unknown. So the four Rats and their two jeeps had made their way over to the coordinates given by the pilot.
But what they had found, in Troy's eyes, didn't square with the usual convoy led by Hauptmann Hans Dietrich. Most often, he brought along enough firepower, half-tracks with mortars and machine guns, self-propelled guns with 20 mm cannons, and even the occasional Panzer IV tank, to deliver a decisive blow to the Rats—if they weren't so quick in getting out of the way.
"Have you spotted the convoy?" called Moffitt from below. "Is it Dietrich's, do you think?"
Since Dietrich's base at al-Qarah was not too far away, perhaps only ten miles, it stood to reason that it was his convoy, and from its direction, leaving the base rather than returning to it. But why go unarmed?
With the sun making his sweaty neck scratchy, bearing down like a hot poker on his head, and a few flies buzzing around his face, Troy swatted them and put the binoculars up to his eyes again. He saw the peaked cap of the captain in the front seat of the Kubelwagen. Oh, and yes, there was his driver, Pvt. Kurt Hilfer, doing his best not to think of strudel, and possibly, in addition to that, not to fall asleep at the wheel.
Jack Moffitt, Troy's second-in-command, came up the side of the dune and plunked down beside him. He used Troy's binoculars and spotted the four vehicles moving along, caterpillar-style, across the desert.
"What's in all of those trucks?" he asked Troy, more rhetorically than not. "They're not guarding them very well with a mere Kubelwagen."
"Maybe Dietrich's planning a turkey sit-down dinner out here in the desert," Troy said, grinning.
"That would be more like a picnic," Moffitt joked. "Should we hit them?"
"I don't see why not. They're helpless as babes."
"Unless they've got machine guns in the back of those trucks, like the other time," said Moffitt, with an ominous ring to his voice.
"Let's go find out! We'll have to do this a bit differently. Maybe we'll have a parley first."
"Dietrich might like that," Moffitt answered, "talking first, shooting second."
He and Troy rolled back down the dune, coming to their feet near the bottom and whipping their drivers into action. Tully and Hitch slipped behind the wheels, while Troy and Moffitt climbed up to the fifties mounted in the back of the jeeps.
"Go!" Troy cried, and like a whirling sand demon the Rat Patrol started off, flying around the dune and coming out about a quarter-mile from the convoy. Surprisingly, the Kubelwagen and the three trucks in its wake pulled up and stopped. The Germans even seemed to be waiting for them. What the deuce!
Troy could not believe it. They were giving up so soon? Unless it was a trap, and they really did have three machine guns in the back of those trucks. He tapped Hitch on the shoulder and the kepi-wearing private rolled up to within a few feet of the Kubelwagen. Ready for any deception, Troy had already cocked the .50 cal. machine gun in front of him. So had Moffitt.
"Captain Dietrich," Troy called. "It's strange to see you out here without at least a half-track or two."
Dietrich smiled, disarmingly. Troy didn't fall for it. The smile of a sidewinder could be just as disarming.
"I'm on a mission of mercy, sergeant," he told Troy. "The trucks are loaded with supplies."
"For the front line troops, no doubt," said Moffitt, his tone of voice very serious.
"On the contrary, Sgt. Moffitt. I am delivering these to an Arab village about three miles west of here. They've been experiencing an outbreak of typhus of late. Also, one of the rival tribes swooped down on them in their weakened state and stole nearly all of their goats and even a few camels."
Troy laughed, shaking his head. "Do you expect us to believe a cockamamie story like that, captain?"
"It happens to be true."
"He might be telling the truth," said Moffitt, looking over at Troy from the other side of the Kubelwagen, where they were flanking Dietrich's command car. "I've heard of some recent outbreaks. And the tribes can be very unfriendly at those times to each other."
"We'll inspect the trucks and see what they're carrying," said Troy, slipping down from the fifty and grabbing a rifle out of its jeep holster. Hitch got out too and grabbed the other rifle. With Moffitt covering the Germans from his fifty, and Tully waiting to see where he was needed, the two walked up to Dietrich.
"You'll show us what you're carrying. Get out, captain," said Troy, opening the door. He stepped back, his Aussie slouch hat throwing a shadow over his eyes as Dietrich stepped out. Dietrich said some words in German to his driver, Hilfer, and the young man nodded in return. He wouldn't start anything.
Walking around to the back of the first truck, the driver remaining inside, Dietrich himself threw open the flaps of the canvas covering the ribs. Inside were boxes marked with food and medicine, Troy saw, knowing enough of the German language to be able to determine if there were munitions in those crates or not. He was not satisfied, however.
"Captain, have two of your men bring out a couple of these crates. Choose 'em at random. I want to see what's in them."
Dietrich called to the drivers of two of the trucks, and they exited and came over, their hands raised. Troy signaled to them to put their hands, Dietrich said as much in German, and then ordered them—again in German—to remove a couple of the boxes. They fetched back a crowbar, as well.
When the lids had been pried off, the drivers pulled out a bunch of straw while Troy poked around inside with the tip of his tommy gun. He could see that Dietrich had been telling the truth, at least as far as these boxes went. Rations and red cross-marked boxes filled the crate. He gestured to the second truck, and the drivers, a bit perplexed, went to it and hauled out another box. Once that had been opened and searched, Troy was able to admit that Dietrich had been telling the truth.
"Where's this village you're going to?" he asked. "Is it on the map?"
"I'm not using a map, sergeant. I know where it is," replied Dietrich.
"Tully!" Troy called. "Get the map out for this region."
"Comin' up, Sarge."
Once the map was brought over, Troy spread it out on the back of the tailgate of the truck, so Dietrich could point out the location of the Arab village. Or two villages, side by side, both of which had been hit hard by the disease as well as by the unfriendly Arabs.
"Two miles to the first," Troy said, marking the spot with his finger, "and another two miles, give or take, to the second."
"Correct, sergeant."
"We'll escort you, and make sure these supplies get into the right hands." Troy paused. "Let me ask you, why are you doing all this, captain? It doesn't seem like the German way."
"For some Germans, it wouldn't be," said Dietrich, with a soft, almost sad smile. "But since we're using the Arabs' land as a battlefield, we owe them something for it. Besides, I've visited both of these villages before and there are a lot of hungry mouths, especially young ones."
"A soft spot for a tiny face, Dietrich?" asked Troy, smiling. "At least it keeps you away from the war for a while."
"I would never let anything stand in the way—even a cherubic face—," said Dietrich, "of beating you, Sgt. Troy."
Troy grinned, unfazed by Dietrich's comment. "Mount up, and let's get going," he said, folding up the map. "I hope we can do some good—if it's like you say it is."
With a somewhat thin laugh, Dietrich said no more, but reentered the command car, waking up Hilfer with the instructions he was to follow the Rat Patrol all the way to the first village. To Hilfer, it was a strange arrangement, but he didn't give voice to his thoughts. The gleam he saw in Dietrich's eye told him that his commanding officer had his heart set on delivering the supplies, even if the Rats killed them all immediately after.
Once at the village, a walled enclosure with many, many small feet, dogs and goats running around, the assorted vehicles pulled up at the main entrance. Women panicked and hurried their offspring into the tents set up inside the mud-brick walls. The men, who were very few in number, picked up whatever weapon came to hand and left their chores. A few more began to come in from the flats where they were training horses.
Troy knew his limitations here. He couldn't speak Arabic, and both Moffitt and Dietrich could, so he let them decide which one would speak first with the tribe's elders. As one of the three older men in the camp spread his arms in welcome, Dietrich elected himself speaker and stepped forward. He knew this tribe, after all, and had been there before he said, so neither Troy nor Moffitt objected.
"We come as friends," he told the chief elder. "As my messenger told you a few days ago, we have brought you some supplies for your sick and some food."
"Thank you, effendi," said the elder, Amir el-Nasir. "This is most generous of you. Would you like to sit out of the sun? We can break bread and share a jug of mare's milk."
Moffitt, sitting beside Tully in the jeep, chuckled, knowing how the three Americans would react to Amir's offer. The bread was hard, unleavened, and likely to be full of either salt, sand, or both. The camel's milk was strong, and curdled even as it was going down the throat. Almost looking forward to it, he had been to many of these Tuareg 'repasts' with his father on his digs years ago.
Dietrich rather liked mare's milk, too. He was about to assent to joining the elder, but Moffitt spoke up.
"We must deliver the rest of these supplies to another village, effendi," he said to the elder, who just then took note of him. Amir was surprised that another of the alajanib, or foreigners, could speak Tuareg. He even seemed to know the elder's dialect, too.
The white-bearded man in a long, flowing robe and striped keffiyeh, or headdress, didn't seem put out, knowing that there was a war on. He may have wondered though why the visitors were obviously wearing two sets of uniforms. He knew, too, the German officer's peaked cap, but the headgear of the other four was strange to him.
He clapped his hands, and in an instant, several willing souls were unloading the trucks and stacking the boxes and crates inside the tents.
"Do they know how to give themselves shots?" asked Troy, thinking of the typhus vaccine.
"One of my medics came a few days ago"—the messenger that Dietrich had mentioned to the elder—"and vaccinated as many as he could until the vaccine ran out. We just got some more in."
"Wasn't that supposed to go to the front line soldiers?" asked Moffitt. "Or did you just add it on the requisition form?"
Dietrich smiled. "That was exactly what I did. What Berlin doesn't know won't hurt them."
A strange war, Troy thought, shaking his head at it all. Here was Dietrich, trying to win a war for Germany, but showing his good side by inoculating and feeding a tribe or two of Arabs. From the way the Germans usually treated them, Dietrich's act was a miracle of compassion.
He looked over at the progress of the unloading. Tully and Hitch were helping, too. Dietrich's drivers would unload enough for this village, and then they'd move on to the next. Luckily, there were only two villages on the agenda, as Troy didn't think that Captain Boggs, his commanding officer back at base, would permit him to hold up the war much longer than that, even if—alongside his mortal enemy—he was distributing aid.
Intent on going to retrieve their stolen animals, Amir and a few select men accompanied the Rats and the trucks and the Kubelwagen. Amir was not too old. He'd been riding horses since he was born, about sixty years. No jeep could outpace him for long on the deep, rolling sands.
The unloading commenced at the second village. Miko, the village leader, younger than Amir with a darker beard and fiery eyes, pulled Troy, Dietrich, and Moffitt aside and showed them the empty brush corral where the goats had been. Just like at Amir's village, the marauders hadn't been content to steal only food and raiment, but livestock as well.
"What do you think, Dietrich?" asked Troy. "Should we go in there, guns blazing, and rescue the herds?"
"No, Troy. Even the thieves have their families with them, women and children who might get hurt in the crossfire."
"I hadn't thought of that," said Troy, raising his eyes to look out over the desert. He had an idea. "Miko," he said, addressing the leader, "If we went at night, could you cut out your own herds?"
Miko, vitality oozing out of his every pore, nodded. He knew some English, too. "They know our voices, Sgt. Troy. They'll come."
Moffitt said, "I'm familiar with these hills, so we could separate and hit the camp from two sides, while Amir, Miko and the other men round up their stock."
It was decided then. With the sun slipping below the horizon soon, the Rats in their jeeps, the Arabs on their proud-stepping Berber horses, and Dietrich and his men in two of their trucks, leaving the empty third one at Miko's village to be picked up later, made their way to the marauders' camp.
Once there, the three sets of men separated, the Arabs dismounting and leading their horses to the corrals they were still able to see in the twilight. Dietrich and his men struck off to the west on foot, while the Rats took the frontal approach and rode right into the unwalled tent camp, their headlights bright.
Firing for effect to scare up the sleeping tribe, the sergeants and their drivers rode around the central area. The women and children ran for their tents, while the men formed a large knot with knives drawn. Knowing that they were no match for the machine guns on the back of the jeeps, they held off attacking.
Moffitt spoke up in Arabic, though the Tuareg couldn't see him in the headlights. His voice was a mere ghost's. "Stay right there, and don't move. We've got the two big guns, and we'll fire if you attack us."
At the sound of goat bleats and balking camels, the men turned to the corrals, which were located in back of the tents. Realizing that they were being 'robbed,' several began to leave the knot and approach, murmuring in a murderous undertone. Troy shot at their feet, causing them to back away more quickly than they had approached.
"Don't force us to kill any of you!" shouted Moffitt. "We have the upper hand here. We want the leader of the tribe to step forward."
When no one did so, he nodded over at Troy. He hadn't understood Moffitt's words, but he did know what his nod meant. He again fired, but moved the fifty around, striking a few cooking pots and a horse trough, its water spewing out of a trio of holes. The murmuring continued. An 'ugly' scene was about to erupt.
Just then, Dietrich and his men entered the scene, walking through the tents and into the main area with their rifles trained on the Arabs. Moffitt repeated his request for the marauder leader to step out. The pride of the man must have got to him, for he stepped away from his men and faced both sergeants on the jeeps, looking from one to the other.
"I am al-Bayed," he said in Arabic, "and I lead this people."
"Did you also lead them on the raids in the last few days?" Moffitt asked.
The leader shifted and turned about, looking for support from his men. He was frightened. They could kill him where he stood, or take him away in irons. He didn't say anything.
"That's him!" cried Miko, entering the scene on horseback. His men and Amir's had cut out the goats by calling to them—the goats recognized their voices and whistles—and were even then beginning to walk them back to Miko's village, the closest of the two, where they'd be divvied up and rested. "I know my own cousin!"
Miko had been speaking in English, so Troy caught his words. "Your cousin! He did all this to you?"
"He was always the black goat of the family," said Miko from the saddle. "No one was sad to see him go and start his own tribe." Not the black sheep with these goat-herders!
"He'll have to come along with me," said Dietrich. "He'll need to pay for what he's done."
"Nothin' doin'," said Troy. "We're taking him back to the nearest Allied base. We can't have the rest of the Arab tribes think we're working with you in any way, even to save these people."
Dietrich knew he was right. Much had been done to the Arabs by the Germans and their Italian colleagues in this war. Tuareg men had been forced into labor camps, their women had been harassed, and promises of liberation had been broken by German and Italian alike.
The Germans now, and the Italians before them, had desecrated the Tuaregs' sacred sites, building their forts in them. They had poisoned wells, conscripted their men for women's work in their camps, and raided their herds when their supplies ran low. For Troy and his men to turn al-Bayed over to him, it would look like collaboration. The Allies' standing with the tribes would be forever tarnished.
"Take him, Sgt. Troy, he's your prisoner," Dietrich said, realizing Troy was right. "My side has a lot to answer for to the Tuareg. Even our compassion is suspect."
Miko spoke up. "No, effendi, by bringing food, medicine, you make up for what your people have done to us. You have replaced evil with honor."
Dietrich didn't say anything, but he bowed his head slightly in acknowledgment of the compliment.
"I must catch up with my men," said Miko. "Go in peace, my friends." Waving, he rode off through the tents and out onto the desert, his colorful robes flapping in the wind and his keffiyeh trailing behind him.
"Captain, if you'll take al-Bayed and tie him up, we'll cover you," said Troy.
Moving over to the husky Arab with two of his men, one of whom had a piece of cord with him, Dietrich secured al-Bayed's hands behind him. The other men grew restless at this procedure, beginning to murmur again and move apart to surround the jeeps, but Troy and Moffitt silenced them with a few well-spaced rounds at the very tips of their sandals. If they wanted to keep their toes, they had to be cooperative.
When the marauder had been seated in Troy's jeep, Troy, Moffitt, and Dietrich had a last word together.
"You've given us a lot to be thankful for, Dietrich," said Troy, in a rare moment of humility. "With your help, we've brought peace to the Arabs."
"We can't always destroy, even in war," said the German officer. He stopped short of extending a hand to Troy. Troy, however, wasn't offended. He raised his hand in salute, only lowering it after Dietrich, whose rank was higher than his, lowered his.
"Troy," said Moffitt, "why don't you and Hitch and Tully go back to base with your prisoner? I'm going back with Amir to his village. He offered us a feast of camel's milk and bread. It is Thanksgiving, after all!"
Dietrich noted, "After I pick up my truck at Miko's village, I believe I'll join you, Sgt. Moffitt!"
"Meanwhile," Troy griped, "as it's too late to return to base now, the three of us will be eating mystery meat tonight with all the trimmings."
30
Thanks for reading!