El Alamein by Jack Murray (most popular novels of all time txt) 📕

The buzz of an engine woke him from this reverie. He quickly got rid of the parachute and tried to stand up. He gave up. He’d rest a little longer. It didn’t feel as if anything was broken. Nor did it feel as if everything was in perfect running order. A faintness overcame him. He wasn’t sure if this was the sun or, more likely, shock.

The buzz of the plane grew louder.

He rolled away from the parachute and faced in the direction of the plane. It seemed to be heading this direction. It was also flying rather low. The final observation was the most chilling. If his eyes weren’t deceiving him, its front was tipped with yellow.

He lay on the ground and waited for the enemy plane to come. The pilot was flying parallel with the ground; perhaps one hundred feet. Should he play dead? It was probably too late for that now. Manning wondered idly if that had been a tactical mistake. There was little for it now but to take his medicine. He sat up from his flat position.

He’d look the beggar in the eye.

The plane was a few hundred yards away now. And loud. Very loud in fact. Manning braced himself for the bullets that would strafe him into the next world.

They didn’t come.

He saw the pilot looking at him. He saluted then he was away. The enemy plane was riddled with bullets, yet it had survived. Such was the margin between life, death and everything in between. Marseille, for Manning was in no doubt it was he, lived a charmed life. The plane ascended quickly into the blue sky and within minutes was no more than a dark speck.

Manning tried to stand again. He rose gingerly to his feet. Nothing was broken. He wondered about the pain in his side. If it was a busted rib then he’d gotten off lightly. He sat down again and considered his options. They weren’t great. He didn’t know how far inside his own lines or, indeed, enemy’s, he was. He didn’t know how far he would need to walk. It would be night within an hour or two. This was a consideration, too.

The sun was beginning to burn him. He pulled the parachute over his head and sat underneath the white silk listening to the sound of battle. It was horrible and hypnotic. Oddly, he felt sorry for the poor devils caught in the middle of it all.

He stayed like that for an hour.

Then he heard the sound of a vehicle. It grew louder. If it were the Germans, he would be a prisoner of war if he were lucky. They may decide to dispense a more immediate form of justice. He threw back the parachute and rose slowly once more.

The jeep approached him at speed and drew up a few feet away. A sergeant jumped out and looked Manning up and down.

‘Lost your kite?’ asked a very English voice.

‘It seems to have lost me.’

‘Hop in,’ suggested the sergeant.

Manning didn’t need to be asked twice and he hobbled over to the jeep. The sergeant helped him in, and they set off in a northern easterly direction.

‘We’re just two miles up this way,’ said the sergeant.

‘How did you know I was here?’ asked Manning although he already knew the answer.

‘Your chaps contacted us. Apparently some chap called Marseille had dropped a message telling them where they could find you. Probably too close to our lines to risk sending someone from their side. Jerry gave our boys a bit of pasting up there I gather. You’re the third one we’ve picked up today.’

The battle continued to thunder somewhere in the vast nothingness. Manning could think of nothing else to say. He looked in the direction the fighting. It rumbled and raged in the dying light.

30

Alam el Halfa, Egypt: 2nd September 1942

Manfred gazed up at the sky and looked forlornly at the bombers. They had been coming in twelves and eighteens for the last twenty-four hours. It was a tidal surge from which there was no escape. He and the rest of the crew looked up at the approaching waves and did not move. They couldn’t.

They were out of fuel.

Some far off spot would be obliterated by their evil cargo. The ack, ack seemed perfunctory as if they were going through the motions. By now Manfred and, he suspected, Basler, accepted that they were losing. There was no way past the wall of fire they’d encountered. Surely Rommel could see this. Surely he could see that without petrol it was academic anyway. They were stuck; at the merciless mercy of an enemy that knew they had them where they wanted.

Basler and Manfred exchanged glances; an unspoken acknowledgement that there was no point in wasting ammunition. It was after just after ten in the morning and Manfred hadn’t fired a shell. Another shell landed in a proximity sufficient to raise heart rates more than a beat or two.

‘So what do we do, sir? Throw rocks at them?’ asked Manfred sourly.

There was more than a hint of amusement in Basler’s eyes, but his mouth was fixed. Here they were, attacking an enemy that hadn’t so much dug in as merged with the evil landscape and laid trap upon trap for their quarry. But worst of all, they’d hardly any ammo to shoot back. All in all, the boy was entitled to grouse a bit. Basler turned to Kiel on the wireless

‘Where are the damn ammunition trucks?’

The young wireless operator got to work. A few minutes later he turned to Basler, a look of disbelief on his face.

‘Another hour, maybe less.’

Manfred sat back and made himself comfortable as Basler duly exploded in fury. He poured forth an eloquently oath-laden rant on the murderous stupidity of those running the war. If ever this was a testimony to Basler’s renunciation of the creed of National Socialism, this was it. His conclusion had the rest of the tank nodding in agreement.

‘Those cretinous bastards couldn’t run a