Dilemma in the Desert Read online

  Chapter One

  January 29

  Angelique DuBois hurried down the street towards the stone hut that she had inhabited for the past month. It was almost curfew time, and the sun was sinking in the west. She was coming from the bazaar, clutching in her arms the meager amount of food she had managed to purchase. She had learned from experience to wait until late in the day to go food shopping. The selection was poor and the best food was gone, but the venders were eager to get anything for their produce rather than having it go rotten and then throwing it away. She had been able to purchase enough for two meals, tonight’s and tomorrow night’s, and then she would have to find more. She was down to her last few francs and had bartered away most of the possessions that she had been able to carry with her when she had fled from Gafsa.

  She had been a schoolteacher at Gafsa until last November, when the world had turned upside down. The English had won a great battle far to the east at someplace called El Alamein and were pushing the Germans out of Egypt and now Libya. Far to the west, the Americans had landed in Morocco and Algeria and advanced into Tunisia. Then, as her lip curled in mingled anger and fear, the hated Boche swarmed into the country, followed by the Gestapo. The school was disbanded and she was out of a job. She had not earned any money since mid-November. It was known for a fact that the Jews in Gafsa had been rounded up and their homes and businesses looted, and it was whispered that they were no longer among the living; that the local Gestapo commander, Major Lindisl, had personally seen to their liquidation. She had seen Major Lindisl once, his blond hair proclaiming him as one of the so-called superior Master race, his square, blocky build frightening her even at a distance. Because of the fluid battles and hit and run attacks by the French and Americans on the one side and the Germans and Italians on the other side, she had run from Gafsa seeking safety, finally coming to Faid.

  The sound of vehicles interrupted her musings, and she looked up to see another line of German vehicles moving west. Many vehicles and Boche had been moving west all day; there must be a battle brewing in that direction. She shuddered at the thought and wondered if she would need to flee eastward to Sfax to escape from the fighting. She hurried even faster towards the abandoned hut that she had appropriated. All the buildings in the town were the same yellowish sand color as the stony ground, somehow emphasizing the overall gloom of the town gripped in the iron fist of its German masters. The few Arabs in the street were hurrying to their own homes, and spared her no more than a curious glance. She knew what they saw: a woman over average height, 21 years old, with black hair falling down her shoulders, black eyes, the typical French elegant bone structure, and a normally willowy figure, now thinned down to bones protruding from her skin because of her enforced skimpy diet. She wasn’t beautiful, but she had a very pretty face, which combined with her elegance gave her a charm that was all her own.

  She reached her one room hut safely and shut the door behind her, leaning her back against it and breathing deeply in relief. Then she laid her meager supplies on the table: a few scraps of smelly goat meat, a handful of overripe dates, a pomegranate past its prime, and a small sack of barley. She tried to use the same merchants for her purchases, and she had a sneaking suspicion that the proprietress of the barley stand had held some back for her, for which she was profoundly thankful.

  She started her fire and fried the meat, carefully dividing it into two equal portions, and then cooked exactly half the barley. She ate one half of the meat and the barley she had cooked, half the dates and half of the pomegranate, the whole consisting of the only meal she would eat this day. By then darkness was falling, and since she had no candles or anything else except the fire to provide light, and no reason to stay up for anyway, she stoked up the fire to provide some warmth against the cold night and then laid down to an exhausted sleep, still hungry.

  Captain Drew Matthews of the Army Intelligence Branch entered the briefing room at Constantine and saluted his superior, Colonel Nuckells, who returned the salute and motioned to a chair, “Have a seat, Captain.” Drew sat down, wondering why he had been summoned; he didn’t have long to wait to find out. Colonel Nuckells studied the man sitting opposite him; the captain was 26, stood some two inches shy of six feet, rather thin, with brown hair and bright, intelligent brown eyes, a good looking face and a square jaw. For some reason the colonel put a lot of stock in square jaws.

  “I have a job for you,” Colonel Nuckells intoned rather pompously. Drew gave an interested look. “We have received word that an informant has important information to pass on to us. We need to send a courier to meet with him and bring the information back.” The colonel beamed like he had just given him a Christmas present and Drew looked back blankly. “I have chosen you to go because you speak French, fluently I hear. I have arranged for an Arab to guide you to your destination, his name is,” Colonel Nuckells looked down at his report, “Abu Mehouf. He will lead you to Sfax,” again he looked at his report, “to a restaurant called, uh, Le Belle Francaise,” butchering the name. Drew winced. “The informant, a Monsieur Gascoigne, will meet you there. He will identify himself by the phrase ‘The lilies are beautiful by the Loire.’ The countersign is ‘I prefer the lilies of Garonne.’ He will give you the information and you will bring it back.” The colonel beamed again while Drew looked blank again.

  “But Sfax is behind the German lines!” Drew exclaimed.

  “Of course it is, an informant behind our own lines wouldn’t do us much good, would it?” Colonel Nuckells laughed at his own joke.

  “How am I supposed to get there? How do I get through the German lines? How long do I wait to be contacted? How do I get back?” To Drew these were all very important questions that seemed to have been overlooked, especially the last one.

  Colonel Nuckells looked at him sternly, “You will check out a vehicle from the motor pool and drive to the front lines, after that you will have to use your own initiative. Undoubtedly you can find out from the front line commander the most likely places to cross over into enemy territory, and your guide knows the area and can lead you to, uh, Sfax.”

  “How much does this Abu whatshisname know about the operation?”

  “Only that he is to take you to that café,” the colonel didn’t try to pronounce it this time, “at Sfax and lead you back.” He sounded very sure of himself. A few minutes later when Drew met Abu Mehouf and saw his sly face, he wasn’t at all sure that the Arab didn’t know much more than he should have. But when he left the headquarters building after his briefing he was feeling a little better about the operation. He had a suitcase of civilian clothes, a large amount of francs in his pocket, and an id proclaiming him as Etienne Pinochet, a freelance exporter of produce. But he felt less sanguine when he got to the motor pool.

  “What is this?” Drew demanded of the sergeant at the motor pool, staring at the olive drab painted staff car with white stars on it. “I need a civilian vehicle, not an official Army car.”

  “Sorry Cap’n, but your requisition is for a staff car.” The sergeant didn’t sound all that sorry.

  “This is outrageous! I can’t fulfill …” Drew bit his tongue. That would be telling everyone within hearing that he was going on an undercover mission. “I don’t understand why I am being issued a staff car. Why can’t I get a civvie car?” He tried to be reasonable.

  “Because we don’t have any. All we have are jeeps and staff cars, unless you want a truck?” The sergeant could be reasonable too. Captain Matthews gave the car, the sergeant and the clipboard he was holding the same fulminating glare before he gave up and signed the form and grabbed the keys proffered by the too solemn sergeant. He slung his bags in the trunk and snapped at Abu in French, “Stick your baggage in here too.” Abu tossed in his dirty and smelly bag, Drew shut the trunk and both of them moved to the passenger door to try to open it.

  “Here now,” Drew remonstrated, “you drive and I ride.”

  “Drive, effendi? I don’t know how to drive a car, effe
ndi. Camels, horses, and donkeys, yes; vehicles, no.” Abu sadly shook his head. Drew stifled a curse and got in under the wheel. Under the open laughter of the men watching he drove off, an American captain chauffeuring an Arab. They started off on the hundred mile trip to Tebessa, the main Allied base for central Tunisia, in the late afternoon. The open windows allowed air to blow over their sweating bodies, but the hot sun burned down out of the clear blue sky heating up the interior of the car and the air around them. Drew didn’t know which was worse, the hot sun or the weeks of cold drenching rain he had experienced here in North Africa.

  As they bounced and jolted over the overused road, in the midst of vehicles rolling both ways all around them, Drew glanced at the barren landscape, dotted here and there with an occasional cactus or thorn bush. Every so often he could see a splotch of green: date trees or other vegetation marking a water source.

  Drew tried to draw Abu into conversation, reasoning that since they were going to be companions for an undetermined amount of time they should at least be friendly. But whenever he tried to ask about the kinds of plants he saw, or about the Arab’s life, Abu tried to change the subject to the mission they were on. Since Drew had no intention of sharing the meager information he had, conversation soon languished between them.

  When the fiery red sun disappeared behind them and night fell, the thin desert air started shedding the heat and the temperature started plummeting. They rolled up the windows and soon after turned on the car heater, grateful for its warmth, or at least Drew was. Abu was inured to the desert’s wild temperature swings. When they reached the base late that night, Drew was able to secure a late supper from the still open mess hall and a place to sleep for the two of them.

  Corporal Dane Shaw of the26th Regiment, 1st Infantry Division, was not in a cheerful mood. He had participated in the landings at Oran on November 8th, and seen for himself the confusion and muddled action that took place. He reflected on the happenings of the last few months. If the French had resolutely defended the beaches, the whole invasion could have been thrown back into the sea. Instead, although the French units had fought, they had been of two minds whether to fight the Americans as invaders or welcome them as liberators.

  Then Admiral Darlan, the supreme French commander in French North Africa, even though he hated the British because they had beaten the French at the Battle of Trafalgar in 1805 during the Napoleonic Wars, agreed to fight alongside the Allies. The French commanders in northern Tunisia, at the capital city and main port of Tunis, were bombarded with conflicting orders. The Petain government at Vichy, France, ordered them to give all possible aid to the Germans and fight the invading Allies. Admiral Darlan ordered them to fight the Germans. Bewildered, they did neither and then German forces landed at the airports and disarmed them.

  In central Tunisia the French General Welvert acted decisively and turned on the German and Italian units there. Under-equipped and under-armed, he nevertheless put up a spirited defense. Aided by an American parachute battalion dropped by air on General Eisenhower’s orders, for several months they engaged in hit and run tactics against the superior German forces.

  Then had come the main Allied advance into Tunisia, the cold rains that had turned the ground to mud, the arrival of substantial German forces, and now here his regiment was in central Tunisia at the end of an inadequate supply line. The regiment was short of everything: spare parts, ammo, clothes, food, and, in his opinion, leadership. The divisional commander, Major General Terry Allen was, by all accounts, a good general, but the regimental commander, Colonel Andrew “Old” Stark, left much to be desired, in his opinion. In contrast to the euphoria of most of the American soldiers who believed that all they had to do was show up and the Germans would slink away in defeat, he was very wary of the German fighting prowess. After all, they had been fighting for over three years, and the Americans here in Africa had yet to fight a real battle.

  The land itself was depressing to him. The Tunisian desert was barren and desolate with virtually no vegetation growing anywhere except near water. The ground was rocky when dry but turned to mud that was impassible when wet, at least to vehicles. In the daytime it was hot and at night it was cold. It was altogether an unpleasant place to visit.

  He stood up and stretched. He was a little on the short side, standing 5’6” tall, weighing a solid 160 pounds, with broad shoulders and narrow hips. He was good enough looking to have been called handsome a time or two in his life with hair that was dark brown, nearly black, normally brown eyes and a quiet voice and was 22 years old. However, when angry or in the grip of deep emotion, green flecks in his eyes would glow and whirl, and his voice crackled with authority. He had a curious, graceful catlike walk, and once his men got to know him, he rarely had to raise his voice for instant obedience to orders.

  Before seeking his own tent and bed, he checked on the men in the squad he belonged to. He knew some of them were homesick, and he gave quiet words of comfort to them. He could tell some were scared but trying to hide it, and so he gave encouraging words to them.

  By then the sun had sunk and the western sky was becoming dark purple. Dane looked to the east to where the dark bulk of the Eastern Dorsale Mountains loomed up into the black sky where the stars were starting to appear. Already the temperature was dropping and he gave a grimace. At least it didn’t look like rain, he comforted himself. For the last several weeks the gray, depressing sky had shed its load of water, sometimes in a drizzle, sometimes in a hard, driving storm, but always cold and chilling to the bone. And then there was the ever-present mud. Mud on the uniforms, mud in the food, great globs of mud sticking to the boots as you squelched through it. But by now the ground was dried out, and there was only an occasional shower. What he needed was a hot cup of coffee he decided and headed over to the mess tent.

  He poured himself a cup, saw his sergeant and went over to join him. Sergeant Andersson was a big man with a booming voice. He glanced at Dane as Dane squatted on his haunches next to him. Andersson was capable in combat, but the preparation for fighting made him impatient, and he increasingly relied on his quiet and very capable corporal. “You mollycoddle them too much, especially Woolson,” he rumbled, having noticed the time Dane had just spent with him.

  “Woolson is coming along,” Dane quietly answered, unconcerned, as he sipped his coffee. He made a face at the warm, not hot, liquid. “He’s young and scared and has been bullied to the point that he thinks he’s worthless. But he is gaining confidence and eventually will be okay.”

  Andersson shook his head in amazement. How did the corporal find out these things? He didn’t realize that Dane had discovered all about Woolson, indeed all the men in the squad, by talking to them in a friendly fashion, asking questions, and observation.

  “Any news?” Dane asked.

  “Nah, seems pretty quiet from what the lieutenant said,” Andersson replied.

  “Maybe too quiet,” Dane commented with a faint frown.

  Andersson gave a derisive bark of laughter. “The Limeys licked the Krauts at El Alamein, they’re done for.”

  Dane shook his head, “I don’t think so. Rommel and his army have arrived in Tunisia. He’s not going to tamely surrender or go back to Germany; he’s going to hit somebody hard.” Andersson stared at Dane as a shudder went down his spine; it felt like someone had walked over his grave. Dane emptied his coffee cup and went to his tent amid the sounds of hundreds of men all around him also getting ready for bed. As was his custom, when he was able to, he read for a little while from his Bible and had a time of prayer before going to sleep.

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