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It was a hot sandy expanse of rugged road with the wind rolling the sand on the dunes to the left, and to the right, jagged stone rocks that cast long shadows over the packed earth.
Hauptmann Hans Dietrich of the Afrika Korps appreciated the fact that the sands hadn't softened as they would when the sun was overhead. There were only five more miles to go before they reached camp, the mud brick fort that had been part of North Africa since the days of Carthage. It had a small oasis where the inhabitants got their water, but what was loaded on the trucks was extra water and medical supplies for his men, and Dietrich wanted to get “home” as soon as possible.
He scanned the desert around him looking for any telltale signs of attackers. There was usually a cloud of dust and the loud whine of engines to give him warning, and he used that to his advantage. He had two other trucks filled with soldiers, and the convoy to guard, and his driver was very expert in handling the desert sands.
They went another mile and he relaxed slightly. If those raiders had planned anything, they'd have been back where the stones were. He knew their names now - American Sergeant Sam Troy, Privates Tully Pettigrew and Mark Hitchcock, and their new man, an English sergeant named Jack Moffitt who spoke German and Arabic. Someone dubbed them 'The Rat Patrol" -- four enlisted men, two jeeps and the ability to make trouble for him. He'd flipped through a thin file back at the headquarters, and vowed to get even for their attacks. It seemed that every time he left base, they were there.
There it was! The sound of engines came from behind the convoy. Dietrich cursed and waved to his driver, who steered the armored car out of the line of trucks and headed back. The machine gunner on the back truck started to fire and he saw a jeep swerve out of the way.
From the corner of his eye, he saw another cloud of dust, and he clouted the driver to make him spin the car around. The other jeep was coming over the dunes and heading for him. He saw the gunner had a black beret. Then bullets began to fire past his head and he ducked down back into the car, grabbed his machine gun, and leaning out the window, added his fire to the fire of his men.
The jeep swerved and dodged, and he heard the cry of the gunner above him as the bullets hit him. He slumped over Dietrich, blood staining the officer's uniform, and with a curse, Dietrich pushed him out of the way. He got behind the main gun and began to fire, anger driving him into a dangerous position.
His driver dodged the jeep as it barreled towards them, then jerked around in a circle. Dust caked the air, making it hard to see what was going on.
Then there was a tremendous explosion, and Dietrich knew that one of the trucks had been destroyed. His car circled around and he saw the truck had been the one with medical supplies.
But where were the enemy? They seemed to be gone from the field. His driver slowed and then stopped on his order, and Dietrich kept a wary eye around him for another attack as he waited for the dust to settle.
Five minutes later, he could see the damage. One lost truck, others badly hit. One of the water trucks was leaking the precious liquid while another had flat tires. Of the two trucks with his men, one was on its side, dead and wounded spilling out, while the other was parked defensively near the start of the convoy.
Dietrich sighed with relief. Well, at least they hadn't taken out every truck this time. He began issuing orders to help the wounded, change the tires, use the water up before it drained away totally, and thought that someday he was going to capture or kill the Rat Patrol.
The sooner, the better.
Sam Troy jumped down from the back of his jeep and walked over to the other one. "Run out of bullets?"
Moffitt pushed off black beret and slapped the gun in front of him in disgust. "As I warned you I would. We have to get back to base, Troy. We probably should have let that last convoy go through."
"But it was so tempting," Troy retorted, his face creasing in a big grin. “All tidy in a line…”
Moffitt’s driver, Tully Pettigrew, dumped his steel helmet on the seat next to him, and ran a hand through his sweat-dampened hair. His face was dust-covered except where the goggles had sheltered his eyes. There was a fresh score on the helmet from a German's bullet. Tully had been lucky this time. “Like in a shooting gallery, Sarge.”
"Wasn't that that guy, Dietrich? We got him on the run, Sarge!" his driver, Hitchcock, called.
"Wishful thinking," Moffitt replied crisply. "This Dietrich does pretty well most of the time.”
"You shoulda finished him off last time," Tully commented to Troy, who shrugged.
Moffitt looked puzzled. "’Finished him off’?"
"Yep. Well, let's shake it. It's a couple of hours to Falchi where we can get re-supplied," Troy said, ignoring the implicit question. He climbed back in his jeep, and they drove off in a cloud of sand and dust.
Dietrich gave a sigh of relief as he sat down behind the wooden desk that had been commandeered from the former owners of the fort, and sorted through his mail. There were a number of dispatches from HQ, new regulations to implement, and then a pile of the Die Oase newspaper. He frowned. All of the same issue? No, some were newer, but there were at least five copies of one day. He flipped open that day's newspaper and scanned the front page.
A smile crept over his face. That was the reason. It was the picture at the bottom that he'd been looking forward to as a reminder of the best day of his life. The day he'd captured his finest catch of Allied officers and men. He lifted his coffee, newly brewed by his aide, and sat down to read the first letter from home - then to enjoy his article.
Troy looked over the battered copper and tin pots that were piled in a aged wicker basket in the souk and shook his head at their condition. Battered, rusty, dented - and probably over a hundred years old. The old woman trader addressed him in Arabic but since he didn't understand the language, he ignored her.
Beside him, Hitchcock blew a bubble from his chewing gum, and snapped it. He slapped at a black fly and nearly hit a grubby urchin who was trying desperately to sell him some beads. "We gonna spend the day here, Sarge?"
Troy glanced inside the small store built into one of the mud brick buildings in this small town. Moffitt sat cross-legged, a cup of tea in one hand, talking with the Arab proprietor. Against one wall, Tully leaned, his gaze on the transaction, chewing on a toothpick as he usually did.
Moffitt was negotiating a sale for Tully. Why he was set on buying the small stone statue of the girl with the basin, something that was probably made not a decade before even though it was supposed to be hundreds of years older, no one knew.
However, the other three members of the Rat Patrol knew one thing about Tully - he was a very stubborn man.
So, Moffitt had opened negotiations a half-hour ago and was in full flood.
Hitchcock shifted restlessly. "Sarge, let's go on a bit."
Troy nodded. "Not too far though. We don't have a lot of time before we've got to get back to HQ for those orders."
The narrow streets of Falchi were barely passable. Dark brown, mud colored except where the buildings had been constructed out of the stone from the nearby hills, it had been a station on caravan routes for centuries. Now it was a base camp for the Allied armies, most of which was outside the outskirts of the town, and the inhabitants were out to make as much script or bartered goods from their unexpected guests as possible.
The allies had just taken the city several weeks before from the Germans, and there were still telltale signs of the earlier occupation. The souk sold the debris of the many civilizations that had swept through Libya. Copper and brass pots, guns dated from the last century, beads, bangles, old books and parchments were piled jumbled in heaps and the men and women selling them wore long robes and headscarves, and eyed the soldiers with a calculating stare. The children followed them until Troy glared – then they retreated a few steps but still followed. From the latticed windows set in the tall buildings they heard giggles and murmuring, and the chiming of coins that ornamented the women’s clothing, and both men knew they were being watched.
Hitchcock paused beside a bucket made from an old water barrel full of books. “Wonder if Moffitt has seen these, Sarge?”
Troy turned over a couple. “Greek? Arabic. This one’s in Latin.” He flipped open the front cover which fell off in his hand. The seller screeched as he fumbled with it.
“Guess it’s yours now, Sarge,” Hitchcock said with a grin. He held out a bill that was undoubtedly too much, but the woman grabbed at it and tucked it in her garments. She held out the entire barrel, and waved them away.
“A little light reading?” Troy teased him.
“Uh,” Hitchcock said flabbergasted. “I didn’t mean to take them all.”
“Bring it along. Moffitt might find something in it.”
They retreated back down the narrow street.
Moffitt was just coming out of the store, holding the statue, Tully on his heels. They met Troy and Hitchcock, and the four men kept walking. Moffitt passed the statue to Tully who turned it over and over in his hands, his face showing immense satisfaction.
“Reading for your university degree?” Moffitt asked, eyeing the books.
“Yeah. We can use them for under the coffee pot,” Hitchcock replied challengingly.
“Let’s not burn books. What have you got there?”
They walked out of the souk into an open square in front of the local mosque and paused. The crowd swirled around them, a mish-mash of troops and Arabs.
Hitchcock squatted, and began pulling books out. “Can’t understand most of these,” he muttered. He rustled through some papers, then stopped. “Hey! These are in German!”
“Really?” Moffitt pulled one out. “That’s that Afrika Korps paper, Die Oase. The Arabs must have found a bundle of them and are using them for packing material.”
“When’s it from, Sarge?” Tully asked. “What’s the date?”
“Hmm. About a month and a half ago,” Hitchcock said. He flipped it over and stopped. “Hey, Sarge! Look here!”
Troy glanced up. “Yeah?”
“Isn’t that Dietrich?”
Troy pulled it from his hand. He nodded. “Yeah. That’s him.”
“You must tell me about him, Troy,” Moffitt said. “You nearly killed him?”
Dietrich remembered the day that picture had been taken so well. He'd laid a trap with several trucks, one with empty barrels labeled ‘BENZIN’, and the raiding party had fallen into it without thinking twice. He'd netted fourteen men, three of them officers, along with their equipment, which was superior to what he had been driving at the time.
He called for his troops and not only did two trucks come out from the depot but an Army propaganda car, dispatched by Feldmarschall Erwin Rommel himself (or so they claimed). The photographers insisted on documenting the taken vehicles and the prisoners, and talked Dietrich into posing in his armored car. He leaned casually on the machine gun holding his binoculars, the sun reflecting off his goggles and the uniform cap. He had been distracted a second before and his gaze was aimed at his men, but it didn't detract from the imposing figure he cut in the picture.
The article underneath was laudatory as well, and he shifted uncomfortably as he read it. He didn't mind the picture, but using his reputation for propaganda did make him uneasy. He had never wanted admiration - well maybe a little bit - but this was over the edge.
It had been the last raid before he was dispatched to capture a British spy named Maykurth who had been betrayed by an agent in Cairo. That was the raid when he met what was now dubbed the Rat Patrol, was captured, and then nearly got his throat cut by Troy.
He'd been traded for the wounded Maykurth, and the Rat Patrol escaped, leaving Dietrich with the memory of being outwitted and a slight cut on his throat from where the American had threatened to slice it. Would Troy have actually carried out the threat? Dietrich didn't know.
But he planned to ask him when he caught him.
Moffitt pulled the sheet of newsprint from their hands. "Isn't this the officer who was after us on that first mission of ours? The one we left in the sand?"
"That's him," Troy said with a grin. "He was having a good time attacking our convoys until we showed up."
"Yes, so it says here," Moffitt remarked, reading the German.
"What, does it mention us?" Hitchcock said craning his head. He flipped a copy of Homer from hand to hand until the binding broke. "Oops."
"What does it say, Sarge?" Tully asked.
"Don't call me 'Sarge'," Moffitt replied automatically. He was going to break them of the habit before he died. He just might have to end up living forever. "Let's see… Hauptmann Dietrich. Well, he's quite a distinguished officer that we've been toying with."
Hitchcock blew and popped his gum. "Yeah? That's why he ended up facedown in the sand?"
"He was among the first who crossed into France and he was in Paris when it fell. He's worked closely with German HQ and-"
"Then why's he doing convoy work?" Tully asked, kneeling down beside the basket. He pulled out several more copies of the newspaper.
"The German supply lines are as important as their front lines, Tully," Moffitt said with a touch of reproof. "Without them, they'd be sunk. Everything has to be imported from Germany or France, remember."
Tully shrugged. "Except what they take from us."
"Which is everything they can," Moffitt murmured.
"Which is why we spend a lot of time chasing Dietrich," Troy capped. "Sometime we should just capture him."
"Sure would save us some exciting times," Hitchcock said. "So is that gonna be our next mission?"
I'll have to make an effort to catch this Troy and his group, Dietrich thought, folding the newspaper. Otherwise this article is going to be the high point of my army career and I don’t intend for that to happen! For as long as that might be, of course. He could die the next time he met the Rat Patrol.
A copy for his girlfriend Hanne, who he suspected was now dating someone else or she would write him more often. This would remind her that she had a boyfriend fighting for Germany out here in the desert, and he'd rather be there in her loving embrace. Maybe after the war ended, he'd go back and they'd… marry? He wasn't sure he wanted to marry her. But he missed her very much.
He shrugged. "I'll write Mutter and send her a copy. She'll like that." His mother was in danger from those idiot bombers that the British kept sending over, and this would make her feel a little better about the war. She could boast about him to the other women in her social group and maybe paste it in the scrapbook that she was keeping. He suspected that she was shopping for a daughter-in-law and one test was sitting through the book. Well, he had tried to give her things to paste in it.
And Rommel kept him busy enough to add to the pile of clippings. In fact he'd better start putting together supplies for the convoy that was leaving in two days' time. With the Rat Patrol likely to attack, he would need some extra men.
Moffitt raised an eyebrow. "Are you planning to assassinate him, Troy?"
Troy shook his head. "Not unless I get orders. But if he gets in the Army's way then I'm sure we'll get those orders."
Hitchcock wrinkled his nose. He might be well trained in commando tactics but cold-blooded assassination wasn't his style. "That's what they call murder, isn't it, Sarge?"
Troy glared at him, and Tully stood up, papers still in his hands. "Can I use some of these, Hitch?"
"Huh? Oh, sure, Tully. What for?"
"Wrapping paper for that statue."
"Are you going to spend all your pay mailing that thing back?" Hitchcock asked incredulously. "Whatever for?"
Tully shrugged.
"Well, I think we'd better get back to the camp," Moffitt cut in. "I've got to write some letters myself before we leave. Don't we go out tomorrow night?"
"Or sometime soon," Troy said, looking around uneasily at the passing Arabs and other troops. One of them could be a spy. "Don't have all the orders yet.”
"Going send that statue back to your girl, Tully?" Hitchcock asked cheerfully, piling the books back into the basket.
Tully grinned. "Don't you want to know!"
Hitchcock paused, a book in his hand. "Sarge? Is this you?" He held it out to Moffitt.
Moffitt grimaced at the title. "No but it's my father's. I'm surprised to find it here! There was only a small printing." He flipped it open and saw that an owner's name written in the front was German. "I suspect it came from one of the men who were here just weeks ago." He tossed it back in the barrel. "Shall we go?"
They started back, leaving the barrel, but Tully grabbed the Moffitt book and stashed it in his pocket for later reading. They left the basket of books for the scavengers, but took some of the newspapers with them. Who knew when they might need some wrapping paper or something to light a fire?
Two days later, Hans Dietrich handed his aide two letters to send back to Germany, complete with the clipping, and swung himself into the back of the armored car. There were extra men in the trucks, and another troop running on a parallel track in case they were attacked. This time he was going to catch those desert pests or destroy them.
Sam Troy waved and the two jeeps roared off into the desert. Someone had tipped off Headquarters that there was a convoy moving on the German road. Time for some fun. With any luck they'd find this Hauptmann Dietrich and catch him or destroy him.
Disturbed sand settled behind them as they all headed back to the war.