one way and another.
“Anyway, when Rommel made his big breakthrough, and looked like going all the way to Shepheard’s Hotel, Tom’s chaps were being pushed back with the rest. There was some messy fighting, and in it they picked up a prisoner—a warrant officer in the German equivalent of the service corps. They learned from him about the existence of one of those petrol dumps that Rommel had put down on an earlier push—you know the sort of thing, we did it, too. When you’re on the run you bury all the fuel you can, and when you come back that way, there it is. How they got this chap to spill the beans I don’t know, but he did.
“Well, Tom saw at once that if they could scupper this buried dump it might be a telling blow to the Jerry advance, so he went after it. One of his company commanders, fellow called MacLennan, took off with a truck, a couple of Sappers, the German prisoner as a guide, a driver—and Wee Wullie. They took him along because he was big and rough, and just the chap to keep an eye on the Hun. And off they went into the blue to blow the dump sky-high.
“It was away out of the main run, down to the southward, and it was going to be a near thing for them to get there before Rommel’s crowd, so they went hell for leather. They didn’t make it. Somewhere along the way the truck went over a land-mine, the driver was killed, and MacLennan’s knee-cap was smashed. The Sappers and Wullie and the Hun were just shaken, but the truck was a complete write-off. And there they were, miles behind their own retreating brigade, stranded in the middle of God knows where, and no way of getting home but walking.”
The second-in-command’s cheroot had gone out. He chewed it out of the side of his mouth, staring at the table-cloth.
“You know what the desert’s like. If you haven’t got transport, you die. Unless someone finds you. And MacLennan knew the only people who might find them were the Germans, and that was a thin chance at best. If they’d made it to the dump it would have been different. As it was, they would have to shift for themselves—with about two days’ water and upwards of forty miles to go before they had even a reasonable chance of being picked up.
“MacLennan couldn’t go, of course, with his leg smashed. He got them to make him comfortable in the lee of the wrecked truck, kept one water bottle himself, and ordered the four of them to clear out. One of the Sappers wanted to stay with him, but MacLennan knew there was no point to it. Barring miracles, he was done for. He just laid down the law to them, told them to head north, and wished them luck. Wee Wullie never said anything, apparently—not that that was unusual, since he was sober.
“MacLennan watched them set off, into that hellish burning waste, and then settled down to die. He supposed his water might last him through the next day, and decided that whatever happened, he wouldn’t shoot himself. Cool boy, that one. He’s at Staff College now, I believe. But it didn’t come to that; his miracle happened. Up north, although he didn’t know it, Rommel was just coming to a halt near Alamein, and by sheer chance on the second day one of our long-range group patrols came on him just as he was drinking the last of his water.”
The second-in-command paused to relight his cheroot, and I noticed the Adjutant’s hand stray towards his glass, and stop half-way.
“Well, they took MacLennan in,” said the second-in-command, “and of course he got them on the hunt right away for the other four. It took them some time. They found one body about twenty miles north of where MacLennan had been, and another a little farther on. And when they were on the point of giving up, they found Wee Wullie. He was walking north, or rather, he was staggering north, and he was carrying the fourth chap in a fireman’s lift.
“He was in a fearful state. His face was black, his tongue and mouth were horribly dried up, all his gear was gone, of course, and he must have been on the very edge of collapse. He couldn’t see, he couldn’t hear, he couldn’t speak—but he could march. God knows how long he’d been without water, or how long he’d been carrying the other fellow; he was so done that when they found him they had to stop him, physically, in his tracks, because they couldn’t make him understand. One of them said afterwards”—the second-in-command hesitated and drew on his cheroot—“that he believed Wee Wullie would just have gone on for ever.”
Knowing Wee Wullie, I could have believed it too. After a moment the Adjutant said: “That was pretty good. Didn’t he—well, he hasn’t any decorations, has he? You’d have thought, seeing he saved a comrade’s life—”
“It wasn’t a comrade,” said the second-in-command. “He was carrying the German. And it didn’t save his life. He died soon after.”
“Even so,” said the Adjutant. “It was pretty bloody heroic.”
“I’d say so,” said the second-in-command. “But Wee Wullie’s his own worst enemy. When he was taken back to base and the hospital, he made a splendid recovery. Managed to get hold of drink, somehow, terrified the nursing staff, climbed out on the roof and sang ‘The Ball of Kirriemuir’ at the top of his voice—all seventy-odd verses, they tell me. They tried to drag him in, and he broke a military policeman’s jaw. Then he fell off the roof and got concussion. It isn’t easy to hang gongs on a man like that. Although I dare say if it had been, say, MacLennan that he’d been carrying, and not the German, that might have made a difference.”
“Well,” said the Adjutant, “it would have made our Colonel’s attitude … well, easier to understand.”
“Maybe that’s the point,” said the second-in-command. “Wee Wullie tried to save an enemy. The German to him was really a nuisance—a dead loss. But he was prepared to risk his own life for him, to go all the way. I don’t know. Anyway,” he added, looking as near embarrassment as was possible for him, “that may explain some of the things you haven’t understood about him. Why, as far as the Colonel is concerned, he can set fire to the barracks and murder half the redcaps in the garrison, but the Colonel will still be bound to go all along the line for him. So will I, if it means the G.O.C., and the High Command, the whole lot. And so will the battalion. It’s an odd situation. Oh, perhaps Wullie understands it and plays on it. So what? I know the Provost Marshal’s right: he’s a drunken, dangerous, disgraceful, useless ruffian. But whenever I see him at his worst, I can’t help thinking of him going through that desert, marching, and not falling. Just marching. Now, where’s the ludo set? There isn’t a subaltern can live with me on the board tonight.”
I have my own view of Wee Wullie, which is naturally coloured by my own experience of him. When I finally left the battalion, he was still there, pottering about the M.O.’s garden and fighting with the guard; they were still protecting him, rightly or wrongly. What is worth protecting? Anyway, his story is as I saw it, and as the second-in-command told it to me. Only the times have changed.
Friday night was always dancing night. On the six other evenings of the week the officers’ mess was informal, and we had supper in various states of uniform, mufti and undress, throwing bits of bread across the table and invading the kitchen for second helpings of caramel pudding. The veranda was always open, and the soft, dark night of North Africa hung around pleasantly beyond the screens.
Afterwards in the ante-room we played cards, or ludo, or occasional games of touch rugby, or just talked the kind of nonsense that subalterns talk, and whichever of these things we did our seniors either joined in or ignored completely; I have seen a game of touch rugby in progress, with the chairs and tables pushed back against the wall, and a heaving mass of Young Scotland wrestling for a “ball” made of sock stuffed with rags, while less than a yard away the Adjutant, two company commanders, and the M.O. were sitting round a card table holding an inquest on five spades doubled. There was great toleration.
Friday night was different. On that evening we dressed in our best tartans and walked over to the mess in twos and threes as soon as the solitary piper, who had been playing outside the mess for about twenty minutes, broke into the slow, plaintive “Battle of the Somme”—or, as it is known colloquially, “See’s