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Bully and biscuits in the desert

‘I don’t know where we are.’
I had heard that phrase so often I eventually got used to it, and I didn’t bother my head about it because, after a lot of marching, we seemed to get where we were going to in the end. I’d absolute faith in the beginning that the Officer in charge knew what he was doing, but as time went on I began to realise he was not God and was just as likely to make mistakes as was the Lance Corporal next to me, but those mistakes didn’t seem to make much difference.

We were on the escarpment above Fuka airstrip in the Lybian desert, and we had just come back from a stroll in the desert to give us an appetite for tea, bully and biscuits. The bully was one small tin small tin of corned beef between four men, and a packet of biscuits. But we were happy in the knowledge that tomorrow we could look forward to a change: we would swap them round and have biscuits and bully. The drinks never varied and the issue was half a water bottle of tepid water with tablets added that made it taste like someone had drunk it before we did. Trouble was, because the tea was made with the same water the taste persisted, and some suggested it had probably been used to wash out the tray of a parrot’s cage.

However, this meagre ration kept us alive long enough to do what we were doing – strolling around a hot desert during the day. If we were not doing the same at night, we would be freezing as we lay on the cold sand with one blanket and a ground sheet. To any one who has not been in the African desert it is difficult to paint a verbal picture that would do it justice - especially at night. The sky looks like a deep void of blue, and floating in it are what appeared to be clusters of jewels, glinting in the moonlight like the pictures in a kid’s fairytale book. During the day the sky is usually clear, but now and then a fleecy cloud will scud across. So too, back then, would the Italian war planes, which cut their engines to glide. Like the prairie dogs, we were always ready to bolt into our dugouts.

Attacked in the night

I remember one night we had hunkered down to sleep after marching all day. The banter and jokes were missing that night. I think because everyone was completely exhausted with the heat and the everlasting flies, which caused us to use more energy keeping them at bay so we could breathe. Even the Officer was quiet as we scraped the sand away to make a depression so our bodies would not show a silhouette in the moonlight. We were also sheltered in case a sandstorm developed during the night.

Before going to lie down, we would sort out who was going to watch for two hours. These two blokes would awaken two more, to do another two hours, and so on until dawn. I must have dozed off and I was dreaming. I was watching a train in the distance, and gradually it was getting nearer. Suddenly, I woke up to see a Bren gun carrier, racing toward us at about sixty miles an hour. (If you have never seen a Bren gun carrier at speed in the desert, the best comparison I can offer is to a speedboat on the river. When a Bren carrier hits a bump at speed it becomes airborne, and the only part of it one can see is the front, because the remainder is obscured by billowing clouds of fine dust.) He was on us and gone, leaving behind him clouds of choking dust and two of our blokes dead. He kept going because he couldn’t tell he had hit someone.

Hyenas and grilled food

One night I woke up to a funny noise, it sounded like some one was suffering an asthma attack, and I looked to where the sound was coming from. Five feet away were a pair of eyes, glowing like two live coals in the dark. Now and again the hyena would bend its front legs and sniff at the bloke who was either asleep or playing dead a few feet away, but I wasn’t in a playing mood so slipped off the safety catch of my rifle and the hyena was gone like a shot. He must have seen me rear up to aim but I would not have let go for fear of hitting the bloke laying there. Also, I would have given our position away, but I would have shot if it had attacked. They have a powerful bite, and if one attacks, then the entire pack do, so one. One hyena would back off, but not a pack, and in the dark when you can see lots of pairs of eyes winking at you it’s time to do something about it before they get too bold. I did - I yelled a rude four-letter word, followed by ‘…off!’, and this woke everybody, or rather it roused everyone, because others had been awakened by the funny noises, and I noticed most now had a naked bayonet to hand. In the morning we had a laugh about the incident, but at the time it was not funny.

We marched some more and came upon some blokes in trucks, they gave us some fresh water, and we got a drink of hot tea from them and some grilled sausages, but the same old biscuits were present. That was still the best we had tasted for a long while. I liked the way they grilled the food. With a tin half full of sand they sprinkled some petrol into the tin and the sand immediately soaked it up. Then someone struck a match and threw it into the tin and it looked just like a gas fire because the petrol can only burn when it mixes with the air at the surface of the sand. Anyway, it made a pleasant change from bully beef in tins, which could not wait to get out of the tins, and were oily due to the sun’s heat during the day. We said cheerio to the blokes and continued our march.

Listening in on the Italians

We were told to be extra on the alert because we were close to an Italian listening post, and we dug out just enough sand so we could lay down and not be seen in the moonlight. Then we lay very quiet and listened. In the distance we could hear the Italians speaking and laughing. Sometimes one Italian would stagger out to obey nature or to throw up, having mixed drinks or over indulged – it sounded like they were having a party. We remained silent and watched and waited. Should one of the Italian revellers come too close we decided we would nab him, and take him back to our lines and get information from him. Now the trick here was patience, and it was disappointing when the Officer threw a stone and pointed at his wristwatch, mouthing ‘Time we were gone.’ We had to get back to our position as it was getting light.

Even without a prisoner all was not lost. We drew a map of where we had been and what we had seen and heard, and this was be passed on to someone else who would get it, together with other reports, and add it to the big picture. The Italians probably thought a missing bloke had got lost in the desert, it being dark and the bloke usually p----d as a cricket.

Tanks and Officers

After some weeks and we learned the operation was going to be motorised so we were moved back to the escarpment.

We were below the escarpment digging trenches in the sand when some one shouted, ‘TANK!’ The officer shouted, ‘WHERE?’, and the bloke pointed at the tank to our front. If it had been a dragon breathing flames one could not have got a better reaction from our blokes. After the initial shock of looking at this steel-clad monster, peering at us over the top of the escarpment, all the blokes in the area were grabbing their guns and putting a round up the spout. The Tank’s gun was pointing our way, but since the machine was up on the escarpment and we were below, the Tank crew could not have cranked the gun down to fire at us. The angle was also too acute for the machine gun, which we could see poking from the Tank’s front.

Our Officer commanded everyone to load and aim at the tank. Then the top opened and a posh voice called, ‘I say chaps, any chance of a brew?’
Our red faced Officer went up and gave him a good rollocking: ‘We nearly shot you, you clot.’
‘Not really old boy,’ chirped the bloke with a curly moustache and black beret. ‘Those things don’t pierce these things, you know. Still you might have scratched the paintwork, and then I would have taken an extremely dim view of that. Whar, whar, whar, what?!’
I thought our Officer was going to cry, he was so annoyed. You could tell how dischuffed he was, because he made us fill in what we had dug out and marked out a spot about fifty yards further back.

Before we got started digging, another Officer came along and asked what were we playing at: ‘If you have a trench here you are in line of fire from the escarpment,’ said he.
‘No, no, that won’t do. Oh deary me, no,’ and he walked to where we had just filled in and said, ‘This is the right spot, I think. Yes, this is more like it. I think this will do nicely.’
Taking the little whistle that hung on a string round his neck, he put it in his mouth, blew a short sharp blast, put one hand on his head and shouted, ‘Everyone to me, move.’
I heard some of the ex-Indian servicemen groan, ‘Gawd, where did we get this bleed’n’ fairy from - the bleed’n’ Brownies?’
A Scots accent joined in, ‘Aye, but he blaws a canny wustle, ye ken?’
Another suggestion was to shove the whistle where he couldn’t reach it, and a murmur of approval seconded this remark, just as guffaws of laughter also supported it. The red-faced Officer snarled, ‘Get on with it then.’

The disgruntled among us had to shovel out the now loose sand, and we were glad when it was finished. We could drape our ground sheets over it to get some shade. Meanwhile, our stalwart Commander was sitting on a rock under an umbrella sipping drinks from a cool drink esky.
One ex-Indian wallah said, “Yu wouldn’t see that in India.’
‘Na, mate. Yu would not. Some o’ these cocky young buggers come straight from Sandhurst. Think they know it all.
‘They don’t know if their ass is bored or punched ‘alf o’ ‘em.’
‘We ad wun bloke broke the neck off a bottle cos e’ didn’t know how tae get the bleedin’ top off. Naw, I aint pullin’ yer leg mate. I bet Daddie’s maid served him drinkies every day so why should he bovver?’

Remarks like these eased the tension sometimes but there were times when it could get out of hand, usually if a mobile canteen had just visited the area. Some blokes would simmer and when the canteen came they would get so full, both with liquid and rage. If at the wrong moment one of these cocky young Officers happened along and started to be abrasive that was the trigger, and I have seen good soldiers go to the glasshouse for attacking an Officer. (The glasshouse is a bit like the film ‘The Hill’. No one in his right mind wants to end up in the Glasshouse.)

We had another new Officer came to us while we were in the desert. No one knew anything about him and we kept an eye on him for the first few days. One day while we were on a march through the sand we stopped and he surveyed the landscape with his binoc’s and suddenly remarked, ‘This is a God awful place - just miles and miles of s—t-coloured f—k all.’
Some blokes had a giggle and that broke the ice. He turned out to be a good Officer. He would take off his shirt and get stuck into any digging we had to do, not like some of the other twenty-day wonders they sent us. When no other officers were around he was like one of us, he had no crust on him at all. Like some other good blokes he got killed at Sidi Barani.

Spiders and vultures, born out of wedlock

I was sitting on the sand busy cleaning my rifle, cooling breeze drifted across the hot desert and I thought how pleasant it was sitting here minding my own business, when out of the corner of my eye I saw movement in the sand about fifty yards away. I carried on what I was doing but I was looking side ways out of my ear it seemed, but there was nothing there. When I had finished cleaning I clipped a canvas scabbard over the bolt part of my rifle to keep the sand fouling the very slightly oiled bolt. I looked at the sand were I had seen movement and could now make out a big sand spider, which looked like the pictures I had seen of the huge bird-eating Tarantula. At first I thought nothing about it until it slowly began to move toward me. I picked up a stone and threw it at the spider but the spider side-stepped and the stone missed.

I threw another stone and it dodged that one also. Then I put my bayonet on my rifle and tried to stab the spider, but it evaded my every effort, and I now noticed it never retreated. It would inch forward when I walked away from it but when I approached, it would squat down ready to dodge again. I now felt the hair on the back of my neck rising because I had not come across anything like this before. I was not going to turn my back on it.

I was thinking, does it spit poison? Can it jump or bite? Could it be poisonous, even? It was definitely aggressive, and I was taking no chances. Then I had a an idea, I would outwit the little s--- for attacking a Brit, so I put down my rifle and at the same time I kept my eye on the spider, having seen how fast it could move. I collected as many small stones as one hand could hold I approached the spider that squatted down again as I approached it. I let go with this hand full of stones and the spider did not know which way to move to evade the volley of stones that hit it like a blast of buck shot. While it lay stunned I gave it one for good measure with a really big stone. One of our blokes wandered over to see what I was doing and when he saw what was left of the spider he said, ‘You wouldn’t want that in your blanket at night.' I agreed.

We always knocked our boots out in the mornings, which were all we ever took off at night. We knocked them out because some times during the night a wandering centipede would decide he had found a new home and creep into a boot or up a trouser leg. That's why at night we always used to tuck the bottom of our trousers into the tops of our socks. There were scorpions, most of the bigger rocks had scorpions under them so one always checked before sitting with ones back to a rock. They could be very painful and some times fatal. Hawks and vultures knew when it was grub time and one had to cup one's hand over ones bit of bully sometimes other wise they would silently swoop and the food was gone from the mess tin. I’ve seen irate blokes throwing stones after a fast departing vulture with the bloke’s bully ration firmly grasped in its talons. According to our blokes all vultures in Africa were born out of wedlock.

Sometimes a group of our mob, The Argylls, would pull up at our position and they would take over while we would hop on their trucks and we would be transported down to the beach for a swim and relax. Wash our clothes out and drape them over a dead bush and go for a swim. They would be dry by the time we got back. Then we would give them a good beating to get rid of the salt. These little trips to the beach were really appreciated because we hardly ever got to take off our equipment back at the position in the desert. We were sort of, ’Stood to’ at all times. Always ready for action meant just that, because there were times when a light dust storm could cover an enemy bent on destroying anyone they just happened to encounter.

There are still some of our blokes in the desert who will never be found. Because the wind blows and the sand moves, they have no marker, but they will be remembered by those who loved them, and those who were fortunate enough to have shared their company in this lonely desolate landscape. They left us in the bloom of youth and we owe them. We got the freedom but they paid the bill.

2982252 Pte Barker T.O. 1st Bn Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders

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