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party, so when there was a whiff of a spotter plane around we were ordered out to churn up the desert. We would head safely away from our main force and skid around frantically with tracks leading all over the place. Our dust cloud, climbing into the air, created the impression of a far bigger force. Then we would retreat with dust coating our faces and lining our mouths and wait for the flying circus to come over and bomb the open desert. They usually obliged.
    It didn’t always work. We were back in reserve when an Italianfighter screamed overhead, then another. There was no time to run. I hit the deck getting a mouthful of desert and hoping the pilot had had too much coffee. I counted about a dozen CR42s in all, ugly biplanes with a squashed body, but it was the big Savoia bombers I was worried about. They were over us soon enough, a trio of them, lumbering beasts with an extravagant three engines. The first blasts shook the earth but the bombs fell short of the target. Before they could have another go, help arrived. They had far more planes than we did but a few Hurricanes had been sent out to take over from our old Gladiator biplanes and these now showed up. The chase was on high above us and pretty soon we were alone again in the desert.
    Three days later they came back in strength at 1100 hours. There were ten Savoias this time and not a Hurricane in the sky. We all hit the deck and one of the bombs fell within thirty yards of me in a small depression in the undulating desert. When the sky cleared and we could stand again I saw from the commotion below me that someone had copped it, a lovely chap called Jumbo Meads. He was a popular sergeant, very tall, blond and handsome and not the average, nasty NCO. We felt his loss all right but you couldn’t afford to get bogged down in sorrow. There was never any time.
    The Savoia bombers were a nuisance, particularly at night when relays of them would fly around dropping one bomb at a time, to spoil our sleep. That was why I took to kipping under the carrier.
    Soon after that I spent a day driving 3rd Lieut. Merlin Montagu Douglas Scott. He was a grandson of the Duke of Buccleuch, related to the royal family, and a first-class officer, both precise and pedantic. We headed for Halfaya Pass and Sollum to see if the enemy was there. Montagu Douglas Scott had a habit of getting a bit too close to the opposition. A few days earlier, he had taken the same route in the middle of a
khamsin
dust storm with hardly any visibility at all to see if the Italians were still holding a largecamp at Halfway House, on top of the escarpment. He found it, hidden in the swirling sand. There was a low stone wall right round it and the whole place seemed deserted, shallow trenches everywhere with canvas covers and rocks piled round for protection. They must have left in a hurry. These little dugouts had bottles, camp beds, letters, photos – all kinds of stuff in them. There were two lookout towers swaying in the wind. All he could hear was creaking and the flapping of canvas in the driving sandstorm.
    Then he got new orders over the radio. The Italians from the camp were retreating a few miles ahead. He chased after them with his four carriers, capturing stragglers in increasing numbers until all he could do was disarm them and leave them by the road. Soon he started coming across abandoned lorries, out of petrol or with punctured tyres. The
khamsin
was still building and the air was filled with reddish sand. Ten miles on, something dark appeared through the haze, a pair of big Italian trucks towing guns, surrounded by around thirty men. He captured the lot of them but right then the
khamsin
finally lifted and showed him the last thing he wanted to see. He had stumbled into the whole Italian garrison, hundreds of them stretching ahead in a long, long column. Everybody started shooting at point-blank range and he had to beat a hasty retreat.
    On this occasion, we got a bit too close again, seeing