Free Take or Destroy! by John Harris Page B

Murray made himself sound casual. ‘We’re proposing to use them.’
    ‘At night?’
    Murray smiled. ‘That’s what everybody says. I said it myself at first. But why not? 1st and 10th Armoured are moving up in the dark when Monty starts his battle. I think it’d shake ‘em rotten in Qaba if they saw British tanks waddling up the main street.’
    Bryant grunted. ‘For tanks you need landing craft.’
    Murray grinned. ‘I happen to know you have one or two in this neck of the woods.’
    ‘They’re obsolete.’ Bryant made a wash-out gesture with his hand. ‘They’re Mark 1s and they’ve never been used as landing craft because they were no sooner built than they were proved out-of-date.’
    Murray’s bulldog jaw stuck out and he looked as obdurate as Bryant. ‘We’re not asking for a Spithead review,’ he growled. ‘Just a landing craft. And I know there’s one in Alex.’
    Bryant’s eyebrows shot up and Murray continued. ‘She carries three forty-ton tanks one behind the other,’ he said. ‘Steams at a nominal ten knots; and discharges her cargo through her bows. She draws three foot six inches forward, and she was sent out here with others in sections as deck cargo. She was ferrying supplies and, until she moved to Alex, she was at Kabrit in the Great Bitter Lake.’
    Bryant seemed amused. ‘You’ve done your homework,’ he admitted. ‘Very well, you can have her. We can even mount machine guns.’ For the first time he seemed to be giving his full co-operation. ‘I’m trying also to get you a frigate but it’s unlikely. All our spare units are earmarked for the feint on the day Montgomery’s battle starts.’
    ‘Six launches, a water-boat, an LCT and the hope of a frigate,’ Murray said. ‘You’ll have to do better than that.’
    They seemed to have reached an impasse once more. Hockold looked at de Berry. ‘What about a raid on the airfield?’ he asked. ‘We need to make them switch on their searchlights so we can see. Flares would help too - as near the town as possible.’
    ‘We could do that.’ De Berry nodded. ‘We might even be able to make the raid seem bigger than it is. They’ve been experimenting with some new metallic strip. I can get hold of some.’
    Bryant was frowning heavily at Murray. ‘What losses do you estimate?’ he asked.
    ‘Thirty per cent.’
    ‘I’d put it higher than that. Can’t you work out some way of withdrawing into the desert to be picked up by the army as they come through. You’ll be holding the centre of the town and the road to the airfield. You might be able to get out that way.’
    Hockold stared at the map. ‘I’m still worried about getting in,’ he said.
     
    It was a thought that worried Hockold a great deal because, with the arrival of the Afrika Korps, the war had become very professional in the last year. In 1940 and 1941 when there’d been only the Italians to attend to, it had even been enjoyable, with the sun rising in a red ball in the mornings and the world clean and good, and a whisky and water at night out of an enamelled mug near a flapping tent. It had been German efficiency that had shaken them out of their self-satisfaction.
    The memory was a bitter one and all the worse for coming back to him as he ate a hurried meal in the officers’ club with Kirstie McRuer. Around them the usual desk-drivers from all three services were sipping their pink gins and discussing the latest ‘buzzes’ from the desert. Cairo was a place where everybody seemed to be busy yet nothing seemed to get done, and the thought reminded Hockold how little progress he’d made.
    ‘We still haven’t picked up any signallers,’ he pointed out.
    Kirstie made a note in a pocket book. ‘I’ll see what we can do,’ she said. ‘But it won’t be easy. Everybody’s busy with the coming battle and the general’s a stickler for getting what he wants. That’s why you’re stuck with me instead of a man.’
    The words took the edge from