The German rearguards fought a delaying action outside Gazala and Dawson said, ‘I think we’ve got him now.’ The British infantry broke through but Rommel had already gone.
Simon, sent forward to check fuel supplies, drove into the refuse of war, seeing among the seaside rocks upturned rusting vehicles. On the other side of the road, where the desert ran towards Knightsbridge and Sidi Rezegh, the abandoned hardware dotted the sand like herds of grazing cattle. Except for an old Lysander that chugged, slow and harmless, like a big daddy-longlegs, in the sky, the whole field of past battles was silent.
Simon was content as he drove with Crosbie who, sitting beside him, had for him the wordless but companionable presence of a cat or dog. The familiar ordinariness of Crosbie was a comfort as the camp moved again and again, following the action as it went westwards into country Simon did not know.
On this quiet coast, with the sea lapping at their elbow, it seemed the war was as good as over. He said, ‘We might be home for Christmas. D’you want to go back to fishmongering?’
‘Don’t know that I do,’ Crosbie said.
Thinking of his return to a wife he had almost forgotten, Simon wondered how he would fit into a world without war. He would have to begin again, decide on an occupation, accept responsibility for his own actions. What on earth would he do for a living? He had been trained for nothing but war.
Outside Gazala, near the remains of a walled house, a tall palm marked the site of a water-tank. The palm attracted him, though he did not know why. Then he remembered the single palm he had seen and pitied in Cairo. This similar palm, swaying in the wind, was like something known and loved.
‘A good place to eat our grub,’ he said.
‘Stop here, sir?’
‘Yes. Get into the shade.’
As Crosbie ran the jeep under the palm, the ground rose about them and he rose with it. Simon, watching Crosbie’s grotesque ascent, scarcely heard the explosion. He shouted, ‘Bloody booby trap!’ expecting Crosbie to shout back, then he was struck himself. Part of the mine’s metal casing cut across his side and he was flung from the jeep.
This, he thought, was death, but it was not his death. Dragging himself round the jeep, seeing Crosbie sprawled a dozen yards away, he called to him: ‘Crosbie. Hey, Crosbie!’ but the man’s loose straggle of limbs remained inert.
Simon tried to lift himself, with some idea of dragging Crosbie into the shade, but the lower part of his body would not move. And there was no shade. The palm, cracked through the stem, had broken in half and its fine head of plumes hung like a dead chicken. The jeep, too, was smashed and Simon’s first thought was, ‘How are we going to get back?’ Oddly detached from his condition, he put his hand to his side and felt the wet warmth of blood. He said to himself, as though to another person: ‘You were afraid to die like Hugo, and now this is it!’ For some minutes death seemed like a fantasy then he realized it could be a reality. The action had moved so far forward, he was very likely to bleed to death before help came.
Putting his head in his hands, waiting for unconsciousness, he heard the sound of a vehicle and looked up. A Bren was lumbering and swaying out of the rubble, having collected the Gazala wounded, and he watched with little more than curiosity as it stopped beside Crosbie. Closing his eyes again, he heard a voice coming as from the other side of sleep: ‘Let’s take a shufti at that one over there.’
As they were lifting him into the Bren, Simon whispered, ‘Never thought you’d come in time.’
The driver laughed good humouredly: ‘Oh, we like to be in time, sir. That’s our job.’
Inside the Bren with the wounded, Simon called out: ‘What about my driver?’
‘That chap over there? Mungaree for the kites, that one.’
‘Can’t we take him?’
‘No, sir, can’t take him. Got to get you and the others back to the dressing station.’
The Bren started up. Propped on his elbow, Simon stared out through the open flap at Crosbie’s body till it became no more than a spot on the sand and then was lost to sight.