Take or Destroy! Read Free Page B

substance of truth and made them all wary of him.
    Hochstatter drew a deep breath. ‘Try the navy at Mersa Matruh,’ he said. ‘And we can hire all the Arabs we want.’
    ‘They work too slowly. It’s not their war.’ Hrabak gestured angrily. ‘We need transport. The panzers took all ours at the end of August. It never came back. If they want what we’ve got, we’ve got to have lorries.’
    Hochstatter frowned. What Hrabak said was only too true. A few lorries had been commandeered, together with everything the wretched Italians possessed, but it was obviously not going to be enough by a long way. Unknown to Hochstatter, however, his signals to army headquarters had been duly noted, and General Stumme was well aware there was a considerable amount of worry in the forward areas caused by a shortage of petrol. He also knew that a British Commando brigade had been sent to the Middle East the previous year and, though it was known to have been badly cut up in Crete, he had no knowledge of whether its losses had been made good and he was very concerned in case it attempted something against his supplies.
    ‘Tell Colonel Hochstatter that the defences of Qaba must be strengthened,’ he directed. ‘At once. And keep me informed about what’s being done because we don’t really know yet what the Eighth Army’s up to.’
     
    The Eighth Army was up to a lot of things, chief of which were the new general’s preparations to knock the Afrika Korps out of Africa, for which the plans, code-named Lightfoot, had been pushed ahead at tremendous speed.
    Army headquarters was a group of caravans at Burg el Arab, twenty miles from Alexandria, set on the coast where the staff could walk straight from their work into the sea. Despite the rumours that he allowed no smoking and no drinking, the new commander was not a killjoy.
    ‘He’ll laugh if it’s funny,’ Loftus said as his jeep jolted along. ‘And he doesn’t give a damn about saluting. They say that Freyberg suggested that, since the New Zealanders didn’t go in for it much, he should try waving at them. To everybody’s surprise he did, and they waved back.’
    His belly jerked as he laughed. ‘The chaps who’ve flogged up and down the same bit of desert till they’re sick of it love him,’ he went on. ‘Though he’s a bit difficult with generals. He says they know a lot about fighting but not much about war, and the machine’s running properly now for the first time since Wavell left.’
    As the dusty jeep drew to a stop, the new general was standing at a table under a strip of camouflage netting which threw a speckled shadow over the map he was studying. As the brakes squealed, several of the officers round him turned to look at it and, though the army commander didn’t even bother to lift his head, what he said was sharp enough to bring their attention hurriedly back to the map again.
    As he finished speaking, Loftus stepped forward and saluted. ‘Colonel Hockold, sir,’ he said.
    The narrow head seemed to duck and lift, and the pale blue eyes stared piercingly upwards. ‘Still up to your tricks, I see, Hockold,’ the general said. ‘I seem to remember a nasty little night exercise when I was instructing at Camberley in 1930. You won, if I remember rightly, with rather a dirty trick.’ The thin severe face cracked into a frosty smile. ‘Just the type we need, because we’re fighting some pretty tough customers out here.’ He patted a folder on the table alongside the map. ‘I’ve read your report.’
    He paused and Hockold waited. The general’s head ducked again and the pale eyes came up once more to his face.
    ‘Not keen on sideshows,’ he went on. ‘Waste of time. Waste of time. Didn’t think much of the one on Benghazi and Tobruk in September. A frontal assault on a heavily defended base seems unnecessarily hazardous. Are you sure about that swept minefield?’
    ‘Certain, sir,’ Hockold said. ‘The harbour clearance units are still busy