Chapter 1 Alamein Shops; Cheaper Way; Observation Post; Private Battle

IN the Australian sector of the Alamein battle-front amid all the paraphernalia of war, there stood late in 1942, a shop. It was unpretentious, surrounded by sand, and was in a water-soaked dug-out, shored with scrap timber and adorned with a model assortment of tins and galvanized iron. Still it was a shop. It was Father Christmas's most advanced supply depot in the Western Desert. On plank tables covered with blankets were silks, dress materials, silk stockings, linen table services, handbags, and all the hundred and one alluring articles which go to make up a gift shop. The familiar odour of a well-stocked emporium that mingled scent of divers goods-triumphed over the dank earth.

Men from the front line, a few hundred yards away, bumped and shouldered about the cramped space, scuffling on the mud floor. Hands which had been tending machine-guns and mortars but half an hour before, fingered silk scarves and dress materials, exploring the secrets of texture.

The scene lacked the gaiety of Christmas shopping at home, with its crowds and children tired with wonderment, but it did have something - there were no parcels to carry! The postal orderlies saw to that. Once their purchases were made and wrapped ready for despatch, the Christmas shoppers shouldered their rifles and filed back to their weapon pits.

In the many Australian units which opened these gift shops trading went on for several days. A few men only could be released at a time from the front line. They would tramp into the battalion headquarters, visit the pay sergeant on duty near the shop, and make their purchases.

A wartime army can supply experts in most things, and this time there appeared from the mass of khaki, men who had been buyers for Australian retail firms, warehousemen and shop assistants. Goods were brought from warehouses in Alexandria and hauled to the front where the shop assistants dropped their rifles and took charge.

The most marked effect war has had on Christmas has been to deepen its significance particularly for men fighting far from their homes. This opportunity to buy gifts in token of the season gladdened more hearts than mouths will admit.

The enthusiasm of the men may be measured by their response. One shop took nearly 2000 pounds Egyptian, equal to 2,500 pounds Australian and most of the others sold goods valued at more than 1,000 pounds Egyptian.

Not all of these shops were in the front line, for the idea quickly took hold in support areas. One field ambulance unit hoisted a tent to display its goods; resting battalions used 3-ton trucks or anything else that could be spared.

This desert Christmas shopping became real news to the troops, and the unit news-sheet of one battalion produced an "Extraordinary" edition. The editor did what few daily newspapers will do-give free advertising space. Obviously in league with the- proprietor of the "Battalion Gift Shop", he declaimed, "We have no expensive shop rent, no costly neon signs or heavy advertising expenses so that we're able to sell at cost price. . . . Our shop is no plate-glass fronted structure, it is 'just the usual dug-out-Western Desert Model, Mark I, and is situated in Sharier el Mud Patch.

"Enter the door of this humble dug-out and you are immediately transported to the basement of one of Cairo's leading emporiums. Well! It's our story and we're sticking to it. These goods are available to you by special arrangements with . . . Saida George, and many other well-known firms at home and abroad.

"Purchase your gift, with special advice from these trained shop-walkers and assistants," the editorial exhortation continues. "The quartermaster will come to light with paper and calico (that's more than you will get in Aussie). We'll supply greeting cards with every purchase; we'll even provide a censor. . . . With your purchase completed, back you go to the luxury of your front-line homes and Jerry won't even know you've been away. That is what is known as Simplicity Shopping."

And then the war obtrudes again, "A word of warning. Disperse! We don't want Jerry shells as souvenirs."

Many strange war stories have been bred at Christmas. Some of them are apocryphal, but all serve to illustrate the season. They range from the icy slush of the last wars Russian Front, where Germans and Russians sang "Silent night, holy night" over No Man's-Land, to the mud of Flanders, and the sands of the Middle East. They may include stories of gift shops, with or without Father Christmas's pine trees and candles, but these Alamein desert shops will surely keep a place in Australian memories.

"SX2663"

THE CHEAPER WAY

"Now that you are in Cairo," said Blondie, you might as well see the pyramids. We can get a guide from the New Zealand Club and be back in town early."

"Why," I queried, "should our hard-earned cash be dragged out of us by dragomen? Give me a guide-book and I'll find any pyramid that ever was, and do it with more comfort and less expense than you'd find on an organized tour. These guides give me a pain in the neck."

"At least," commented the snowy bloke, -you can out-talk any guide in Cairo. Let's see if you can out-guide them as well."

I had some misgivings until I got the guidebook. It cost ten piastres. I would have sworn that there was a map in it when I examined it in the shop but when I unwrapped it at the hotel I found this was not so. The simplicity of the instructions however made the map unnecessary. We should catch a Number 15 tram in Emad-el-din Street and change at the Ghizeh terminus for Mena and then choose any one of a dozen ways of making the final ascent.

We spent twenty minutes next morning looking for Emad-el-din Street, finishing at the place at which I had bought the guidebook.

Certainly they had a map of the city. "Five Piastres, please!" The map was similar to the one I thought had been in the guide-book when I bought it.

We soon located Emad-el-din Street; it was just fifteen minutes' walk. Our hotel was near the main tram stop.

I didn't know that there were so many trams in the Middle East that were not numbered 15. Every other combination of numbers passed but 15's came not. After an hour's solid waiting the twentieth guide who had volunteered to show us "many interesting places" told us that 15 did not run on Wednesday and that we should catch any one of about six trams to the Bridge and change for Ghizeh.

He accepted my rather apologetic explanation that we wished to find our own way about, with the contemptuous tolerance of a case-hardened party politician dealing with a young and ardent reformer. My ten-piastre tip brought undiluted contempt though he accepted it also.

Not knowing that there were first class compartments on the tram we fought our way into a seething mass of smelly and garrulous humanity. From the "Femmes" compartment a lovely pair of black eyes discreetly peeped above a veil in our direction. My attention was distracted by the antics of the conductor. At every stop he stood in the doorway throwing punches at all and sundry in vain endeavour to prevent them boarding his already overcrowded conveyance. While in motion he tried to collect a few fares. Each transaction was the basis for an argument in which all hands said a word or two. One urchin, who had wormed his way in between a fat man in a fez and myself, flatly refused to pay, so the conductor slapped him over the head and turned to us.

I tendered the inevitable ten piastres; he greeted this with such lamentation that I was about to offer him another, when he started to fork out change.

Ten piastres is roughly thirty pence and is divided into one hundred milliemes. Most fares seemed to be one or two milliemes and by the time he had unloaded ninety-eight or so on to me I had a fistful of copper and nickel." I was in some doubt where to stow it but that urchin wasn't. With marvellous co-ordination of movement he swept the coins out of my hand into some fold in his robes, butted the fat man in the stomach, kicked Blondie on the shin and wriggled down the tram-car steps out of my life.

"Haa-ee," shrieked the conductor. "Klifty Wallud! "

"Mais oui," gasped the fat man. "Klifty Wallud! "

The very dirty owner of a bushy moustache and a crate of poverty stricken pigeons leant over to inform me that "small boy, no bloody good. Klifty Wallud." A lovely pair of black eyes from the "Femmes" compartment flashed mirthful accordance with the sentiment.

Our arrival at the Bridge put an end to our embarrassment apart from some unavoidable delays at this and at our next terminus, at each of which I adopted the "trial by error" formula to get the right tram. We arrived at Mena without further incident, at an hour by which, as Blondie rather pointedly remarked, we expected to be back in town.

We lunched at a little caf6 standing in gallant competition with the plutocratic splendour of Mena House. The steaks were done in olive oil; the beer was flat, and the coffee bitter, while the fruit salads looked and tasted like a surrealistic nightmare. Blondie's lemon squash being primitive in construction was, he says, quite drinkable.

Seen from a distance the Great Pyramid is distinctive; from its base it is magnificent. But viewed from the bottom of the hill at Mena it is in a false perspective. After a heavy lunch on a hot September day the climb is so dam steep that Cheops seems like an anthill in comparison.

We hired horses; I reckon I did some smart work beating their master from a hundred down to twenty each. I also engaged a guide just to ease the strain on our nervous systems caused by the pestering by hundreds of them.

Those mokes, and attendants, were tourist wise. Every time I hit mine with my heels the Wallud at his head howled like a jackal; I gave him five piastres to let go the bridle and the nag dug his toes in and wouldn't go at all. The same happened to Blondie. The guide pointed out the Rest House where the kings of Egypt had a breather on their way up. Not being of the Blood-Royal we couldn't find a suitable place to halt and so staggered on to the summit. By this time I was consciously avoiding Blondie's eye.

When we had seen the Sphinx and listened to , a tedious tabulation of dates, weights and measures concerning Cheops' edifice, Blondie and a Tommy corporal who had Joined us at Mena went io see the interior. I remained, seated on one of the lower steps, looking at the city beneath me, shimmering through a blue-tinted haze of heat and dust.

Until the others returned I made hard conversation with a bearded Afridi sergeant whose English was about as bad as my Arabic.

Blondie and the Tommy staggered out of Cheops' interior exuding perspiration and ill-humour. It seemed that the caretaker had got them lost in the darkness and then explained "candle mafeesh", charging them two piastres each for new ones. They slunk through low passages up to the centre of the joint to admire a cavity where the Royal Mummy once rested.

Our mounts had vanished; the guide explained that we had hired them to ride up. Another twenty piastres each would be required if we wished to ride down.

We decided to walk and on the way met another party climbing the hill on the same prads. We left our Tommy friend at Mena, watching the antics of an itinerant conjuror and our guide in a very bad temper at the paltry fifteen piastres we each had paid him.

It was late evening; conversation had Ianguished fairly early in the day and the silence hung heavily. With an hour to wait for a drink I tallied up our expenditure.

Guide-book 10 p.t.,
- map 5 p.t.
- guide in Emad-el-din Street (for information received) 10 p.t.,
- tram fares (including Klifty Wallud), 10 p.t.,
- horses 40 p.t.,
- guide 30 p.t.,
- fortune-teller (self), 5 PA.,
- candle (Blondie) 2 p.t.,
  - making a total of 113 piastres.
Our meals we paid for individually so I told Blondie to give me 55 piastres and called it square.

While so engaged we were joined by a couple of chaps who had arrived in town the night before. They had, they said, rushed through their sight-seeing that very morning. They were disappointed in the town; it had taken five hours; there were five of them in the taxi and all they had seen were the Pyramids, Mahomet Ali Mosque and some of the bazaars. Besides, the price was high; it had cost them sixty piastres.

"Each?" asked Blondie.

"Oh, no! Between us."

"Too much," said Blondie. "Next time let the Wise Guy here take you the Cheaper Way. You have all comforts and no delays, and he does it so cheaply that he's buying my dinner out of what he saved on the day."

What else could I do?

"NX52513"

OBSERVATION POST

CAUGHT by a sudden chilly gust, the tallow candle, burning yellowy on the centuries warred table, flickered once or twice and went out. The old man, squatting on a low stool pulled close up to the table, muttered as he fumbled for matches.

It took him some time to get the candle alight again and when he did so he seemed undecided what to do next.

Startlingly in the even quiet of the tiny room, a cuckoo shot out from his wooden nest in the clock hanging high on the wall, gave ten swift calls, and as abruptly slipped back again. As though this were a signal, the old man closed the book he had been reading and replaced it with a row of faded volumes in the dusty case standing beside the sheep skin covered couch in a comer of the room.

Whenever he moved his great mass of grey-white beard flowed upon his chest like water running over stones and his long black cassock swept up little eddies of dust from the earthen floor. Then, pulling his black woollen skull cap down over his ears, he stepped through the low door-way into the gusty darkness outside.

As his predecessors for hundreds of years before him, from this bare room and the severe little chapel standing nearby high on the hillside, the old fellow watched over the spiritual needs of his flock living snugly in the village spread on the patchwork green and brown of the valley below. The villagers in return kept him supplied with what bread and meat and wine he required. This they placed as an offering for him, and also for an hungry traveller, before a shrine to the Virgin Mary standing outside the chapel door. It was his custom at ten o'clock each night, as regularly as the cuckoo in his clock sang the hour, to see that the oil lamp inside the shrine would surely burn throughout the night and also to collect the offerings which had been placed there during the day. This night was to him an ordinary Grecian summer night with a chilly wind whipping dark clouds across the moon and an occasional squall of misty rain.

When he reached the shrine, the ol~ fellow knelt on the rough stones at its foot and sank his chin into his beard. To his God he prayed for the continued safety and contentment of his people in the village. As long as he had been their priest, they had sown and reaped their crops, had tended their goats and fowls, and had married and brought their children into the world with no understanding other than that God, as represented by the chapel and shrine on the hill, was providing for them and always would do so.

But now the old priest was praying for more than bountiful harvests and freedom from need. He knew that the war, which had taken away so many of the young men of the village, and which had destroyed the north of Greece, was very close to his own valley. All the afternoon, as he sat in his hut, he had watched guns and trucks filled with men streaming through the valley towards the olive groves beyond the village, leaving behind them a trail of flowers flung into their path by wildly excited women and children.

"Kalinicta, Father."

Lost in his prayers, the priest had not heard the soft approach of another hillside watcher.

He stood up slowly and turned towards his visitor vaguely outlined at the edge of the pale glow from the shrine light.

"Good evening," he said. "What would you have me do for you?" Then, as an afterthought, he added, "You may speak English as I understand."

The visitor hesitated before he answered. "I'm afraid, Father, that I'll have to use your church as an observation post," he said.

"As you Wish," the priest replied calmly. "my church is always open to the friends of my people. I see by your uniform that you are one of those. Particularly are Australians welcome, because I know what they are doing for my country."

"Thank you," said the visitor, "but I'm afraid I can't treat you as kindly as you have me. You will not be able to leave this church while I am here. I can't afford to take the smallest chance, you know."

"As you wish," assented the priest.

Thankful that the priest was causing no difficulty, the visitor turned away and called ,down the hillside, "O.K., Fred, you can bring up the gear now."

A few moments later a third shadow came into the lamp light and placed the burden he had carried up the hill on the ground.

"Gosh, Captain, that's a helluva climb with this load," he said, breathing deeply. He looked at the priest curiously, but made no comment. The officer spoke to him briskly.

"I'll look after this chap while you take the phone and wire into the church. Get as high up in the belfry with it as you can and make contact with the gun position as quickly as possible. I'll be with you in a few minutes."

Pulling a ragged map from his pocket, the officer opened it and stepped closer to the light to examine it. After 'Jotting some figures on the sheet he replaced it in his pocket and spoke to the priest.

"Come along, we'll go inside now," he said. By the light of a shielded electric torch, the signaller was busy on a plank resting on the rafters high up in the tower.

Bit chilly up here, sir, but we'll get a wonderful view of the valley," he said, as the officer and the priest came through the door. "O.K., Fred. I'll send the old boy up top for the night. You watch him while you look after your phone. See that he doesn't get away, though he seems harmless enough. I'll have a sleep down here for a while. Call me in a couple of hours and I'll give you a spell." Pointing to a clumsy ladder leaning against the wall, the officer directed the priest to climb up and find a seat on the rafters. Finally satisfied that arrangements for the night were complete, he hunched up in a corner, rested his back against the wall and went to sleep.

Watching through the narrow archway of the belfry top, the officer saw the first dawn giving its almost imperceptible colour to the new day. The priest was apparently asleep on his precarious perch. The officer spoke to him and he opened his eyes.

"You can go below now," the officer told him. "Wake up, Fred," he shouted to the signaller asleep on the floor. "The old chap's coming down to stretch his legs. There's only room up here for one of us so you can look after him for the rest of the day. See that he doesn't move outside the church. Fix up a bit of breakfast while you're on the job." Stiffly, the priest clambered down, the ladder to be greeted by a sleepy Fred, while the officer returned to his watch of the slowly brightening valley.

Most of his attention was focused on a crest of road, where it lost itself in the pass to the west. But occasionally he glanced towards the houses lower down. Through his binoculars he saw the village awaken. One after another doors and windows flew open. Goats and cows, which had spent the night under the same roofs as their owners, dribbled out, and, urged on by small boys running behind them on bare feet, ambled off in the direction of the outlying fields. Soon they were followed by black-frocked, white-shawled women bearing forks and sickles, for the reaping season was in full swing and there were few men left in the village to harvest the crops. The atmosphere of the busy little hamlet was filled with industry and peace and none of its people seemed aware bf the shadow soon to fall over them.

The officer wished from the bottom of his heart that he could warn them. He knew though that nothing which would cause the enemy to sense the trap laid for him, could be permitted. So, for the plan to succeed, these people had to be unaware of anything which would turn them from their daily routine. The officer and a battery of 25-pounders in the olive groves at the foot of the range were part of a small rearguard, which relied on absolute surprise to shock the Hun into remaining in the valley for at least a day, while the main force consolidated a detailed defence line further south. The officer relied on the first shells sending the villagers scattering among the creeks and gullies in the fields, or to the refuge of their cellars while the battle lasted. He expected this to save most of them from harm.

Tensing suddenly, with all his senses alert, the officer swung his binoculars towards the pass. The puff of dust, which caught his eye, resolved into a motor cycle, then another, and another. Running almost nose to rump like great bugs on wheels, a long stream of armoured cars flowed over the crest and followed the motor cycles down towards the village. The officer counted evenly. "Must be nearly fifty of them. What a target! "

The leading cars passed into the village street and slowly the whole column slid to a halt. Doors, marked with black crosses, swung open and grey-uniformed figures jumped out into the early morning sunlight. Some in the village made towar8s the houses which had seemed to dry up of life when the cars approached. The motor cyclists circled round the leading car, as though receiving orders from someone inside, then shot back towards the pass. Fires began to glow along the roadside. Breakfast apparently.

But already shells were on the way. The officer had planned to catch the cars in the village. Stopping as they had, his task became as easy as shooting peas. Tersely he gave his orders through the telephone.

"Battery Target! "

An electric call to action, down the wire it ran to the ever-listening signaller at the other end. "Battery Target," he repeated laconically. The gun position officer, megaphone to mouth, shouted the call: "Battery Target!"

Gunners-lying, sitting, talking, smoking beside their guns-leapt to their feet, taut to answer whatever demands their observation officer, in the chapel on the hilltop, would make on them and their guns.

"H.E., Charge Three!"

"Zero, nine degrees!"

"Angle of sight, zero!"

"Right Ranging! "

"Seven nine, seven oh!"

"Fire! "

The orders pulsed down the line and the guns responded.

"Shot one, through sir!"

This signal came to the officer in the belfry seconds before he heard the crash of gunfire. Binoculars up to his eyes he concentrated all his attention on the panorama in front of them. There it was! A brief white cloud in the olive trees well outside the village. A bit too far left, he thought. Bit too much range as well.

"More four degrees!"

"Six eight hundred!"

"One round gunfire!"

Again the guns responded, the whole of the battery firing almost simultaneously.

Beautiful! As though a giant black and white and brown mushroom had belched up beneath them, two of the cars jumped into the air like clumsy grasshoppers, then collapsed into misshapen heaps. All along the roadside, the green of the fields sprang up in great gouts of flame and smoke and earth. just a touch to the left.

"Less one degree!"

"Five rounds gunfire!"

The air quivered with the scream of shells. When the first devastating rounds fell among them, the grey figures seemed paralysed for a few moments. Then, like disturbed ants, they were scurrying in all directions. Some sought cover in the fields, while others dashed back to their cars. The watching officer smiled. Surprise-absolute and perfect. The car which had headed the column abruptly vanished in a sheet of flame. Others were sliding hither and thither about the roadway as blast after blast struck them. Many were afire. The clamour rising from the valley was like the roar of a thousand angry oceans.

Another dose: "Repeat!"

Great steaming gaps formed in the village. Some of the cars started to fan out into the fields. Like a devil on the keys of a piano the officer played high explosive up and down the column and one after another, under the storm of steel, cars shuddered to a standstill or burst into flame. The few which tailed off the column managed to escape back through the pass, but these were very few indeed.

Finally the officer was satisfied. As informally a s though he were at range practice his message went down the wire, "Stand easy."

A clatter of machine-guns lower on the hillside told him that those of the enemy who had survived were getting adequate attention. He could afford to relax now. Elated with the success of his morning's work he climbed down the ladder. "Hop up top and keep an eye on things for a while, Fred," he said to the excited signaller, waiting for him. "Give me a call if anything happens."

Half way up the ladder the signaller stopped. "By the way, sit," he said, "you'll find the old bloke at his altar. He seemed to go a bit crazy when the shooting started. Just dashed over to the altar and chucked himself on the floor. Been there ever since."

The officer, about to light a cigarette, paused, and the expression on his face changed. In two or three quick strides he was by the priest's side. Stooping, he touched him on the shoulder. "It's all over now," he said gently.

Wearily the priest rose to his feet. It seemed that a deep pain had gathered his soul into his eyes. "You must let me go to my people now," he said in a voice nearly a whisper.

The officer nodded his head. "Yes, go to them, Father. They'll need you now as never before." He was going to add a word of sympathy, or it might have been apology, and a warning about the machine-guns, but the priest was already hurrying from the chapel. As he vanished into the maze of dust and smoke hanging over the torn valley, it seemed to the watching officer that he was borne along by his sombre cassock billowing out around him. Frowning, as though his mind struggled with a problem, the officer ht his cigarette.

The racket of the day had dissolved into a deathly silent night, which pressed down on the earth like a heavy black shroud. Within the shrine the oil lamp seemed like a pallid ghost struggling in another world.

Choosing every step carefully, two soldiers slowly worked their way down the hillside. At last they reached a goat track and set off briskly in the direction of the olive grove which hid the guns. The officer looked at his luminous watch. Ten o'clock. There was no time to lose. Trudging behind him, the signaller stumbled over a root stretched across the path and swore quietly.

Back on the hilltop a dim shadow moved into the yellow half-circle of light from the shrine. It was the priest. For a while he stood gazing down into the blackness of the valley. Then with a gesture, which may have been of sorrow, or perhaps thankfulness, he knelt on the hard stones and sank his chin into his beard.

SX1543

PRIVATE BATTLE

IT was a second or so before Tiny recovered .from the shock of his fall. He tried to get to his feet, and discovered first that his left ankle, was twisted, perhaps broken, and second that he had a companion in this hole in the Western Desert. His companion was dressed in the unmistakable uniform of a German -officer, and in his right hand there was a neat automatic of late pattern. The muzzle was pointed approximately at Tiny's heart. The German's left hand motioned Tiny's arms above his head, and obediently Tiny raised them, mentally cursing his ill-luck as he did so. The German felt Tiny for weapons, found none, relaxed, and looked almost cordial. "Sitzen sie," he said, motioning. Tiny sat.

What damnable luck to stumble into this hole! He had wandered perhaps 50 yards from the tank, but when the sand, which had been lingering on the horizon all the morning, had come swirling up, he might as well have been miles away. In this dim yellow-brown world, the boys might never find him: besides, they had little time to waste in searching. Their job was reconnaissance-something that had
to be done as quickly as possible. Still, if he shouted ...

He opened his mouth, took a deep breath; then the German motioned him to silence with a significant movement of the little automatic. The German struggled to speak English, "Mein men kommen," he said.

Tiny sat back and considered the situation. With his ankle twisted, perhaps broken, there was little chance of getting out of the hole, since the German, with perfectly sound limbs, had failed. So it looked as if he was in for a long spell in the hole; unless luck was in his favour, he might never be found. Food. He had nothing edible on him, nothing to eat, nothing to drink. There was a small packet at the German's side, which might contain food, but the small automatic would prevent his

getting that. The German wasn't likely to share with him, no matter how much he had. Tiny shifted uncomfortably, shrugged off the film of sand that was forming on his shoulders, and winced as pain stabbed through his injured ankle.

The German tensed as he moved, grinned stiffly, spoke in guttural English, "Your, your" -he pointed at Tiny's foot, "1st bat?" "Yes, 71 Tiny said curtly. "Keep that thing pointed somewhere else, will you?" The German's brow puckered as he tried to follow Tiny's words. "Nein," he said, "I haf food, you haf" -he paused significantly. Tiny decided there wasn't much use continuing the conversation. He stared up at the walls of the hole, and at the dust swirling and thinning, far above. He decided to try to shout again. He looked across at the German. "I'm going to shout," he announced. "Ja," the other looked mildly interested, only half-understanding. Then-"Nein." The German opened his mouth, and emitted a tremendous shout. But there was no answer, no sound but the continuous rumble of the Eighth Army's barrage, and the faint, silky sound of the dust. "Ach gott," the German said in a disgusted voice. He paused, then was stirred to further speech. "Mein men kommen," he repeated. "We of der Afrika Korps -wir gehen-we go nach Cairo." "That's what you think," Tiny said. "We've got your measure, you Nazi b--s."

If the German didn't understand the words, he could read much from Tiny's tone, and for a second the muzzle of the automatic wavered as his hand shook. "Why don't you shoot?" Tiny asked. The German grinned. "Dead-you shtink," he remarked. "Schweinehund." Tiny reflected wryly that it was hardly worth while dying just for the pleasure of displeasing an Aryan nose.

The hours crawled by, the dust dispersed, and the heat of afternoon settled on the earth. The German produced a morsel of food from his packet, and stolidly chewed it.

Tiny had an acute urge to jump at him, batter him, knock him senseless. Then it seemed there was an even stronger pull, preventing him. It was no new feeling, this; time and again during his life, Tiny had felt it, causing him to shirk even the slightest of actions. There was quite a good chance that if he jumped on this German he could overpower and disarm him. Anyway, he probably had little to lose, and everything to gain. And yet ... Still, he decided it would be better to wait until the German was a little less vigilant. Not yet. Not yet. His mind took comfort from the thought.

No sense worrying in the meantime. He lay back against the wall of the hole, and deliberately turned his thoughts into pleasant channels. He pictured himself on the back veranda at home. Early in the morning, when there was still dew on the grass, a mist on the river, and an occasional magpie jabbering from the top of the gum down by the big hay-stack. His vision was so intense that he almost persuaded himself that he was there.

When the other Divisions went home, he had thought the Ninth would follow them; instead they had landed in this stoush with the much-vaunted Afrika Korps. Anyway, Tiny thought, it'd be better if they could help to clear up this mess before they went home and dealt with Tojo and Co.

He came back to reality as a plane roared across the narrow strip of sky that was visible. "Messerschmitt," said the German with satisfaction. "Hurricane," Tiny said defiantly.

So the hot African day wore on, until shadow filled nearly all the hole, and coldness intruded itself into the air. As the daylight faded, the sounds of gunfire seemed to decrease not at all. "Wir gehen nach Cairo," the German said complacently. Tiny said nothing. When he had that automatic he could afford to say what he liked.

The last light drained out of the sky. Now, Tiny thought, to get the automatic and the food from the German. But all through the night, it seemed, the German was watching, and when Tiny began to edge towards him, he seemed to see him, and barked a sharp command. After another hour or so of waiting, Tiny drifted into a troubled sleep, and didn't wake until after sunrise, when he felt more depressed than he'd ever been in his life The gunfire was nearer than before. "Cairo," the German said complacently.

Tiny looked at the man, blinking his eyes sleepily and thought, "This is it." In that second it seemed to him more than a struggle for food, for life even. It was a struggle for his self-respect.

With a terrific effort, he leapt across the space at the automatic. He was battering at -n,~ German, battering ... Then darkness was upon him.

The Australian's hat was blotting out the sun. Tiny decided, looking up at it, and felt wonder at the thought. There was a queer look of exultation in the Australian's face. "Just managed to pick you up," he said airily. "Got a few other things on our hands." His voice changed.

"We've got 'em on the run, the Nazi b-----s." He paused, and grinned at Tiny. "Reckon you won your private battle, too." Private battle; Tiny thought. The Australian's voice went on: "Plucky man to jump his gun. Bet you didn't know it wasn't loaded."

"VX22056"