Sahara Adventure Series

6. DEATH AT SUNRISE-2

“The only advice I have, mon Sergent, is for us to dig ourselves in,” says Fritz Mundt.

mon SergentHis words bring Catroux back to reality, and he orders the men. “Dig yourselves in! You must face eastwards.”

He is only giving the order because there is nothing else he can think of to do at this stage, as he knows that even if you manage to bury yourself entirely in the sand, the unstoppable force will still drag you out from underneath the sand. It will roll and jerk you until you do not know where you are anymore and then dump you against a high dune, where you will be buried underneath tons of sand.

After it is over, nobody will even know where the men of this patrol have died. Catroux knows this because it is not the first Sahara storm he has encountered. The wind is swirling around them, cooling the warm sweat on their faces. Scared now, the men throw their rifles on the ground and start digging rectangular holes in the soft sand with their hands, which lie from west to east.

Petacci is not digging, and suddenly he jumps up and starts running eastwards, away from the wind.

“Petacci!” Catroux shouts it out as an order, but the little Italian ignores his sergeant and keeps running. Catroux opens his holster and takes out his big Luger.

“Petacci!” Catroux shouts again. “Halt, or I will shoot you!” Catroux aims, but then Teuns Stegmann shouts. “Mon Sergent, mon Sergent, look over there!” Catroux looks up and sees them too. Two camel riders on a high dune are moving south, past the soldiers, and racing eastwards in the same direction Petacci is running in. The white robes of the riders flutter and blow in the wind gusts, and their clothes look unnaturally white against the background that is becoming steadily darker. The camels are making themselves as flat as possible while running, their legs swaying wildly and their heads thrust forward with the long necks stretched out low in front of their bodies. Petacci has also noticed the camels and stops.

Mon Sergent mon Sergent“Come on!” shouts Catroux. “I am certain those camels are moving towards shelter. They know something that we do not.”

The men grab their rifles, backpacks, and water flasks from the sand and start running downwind. When they catch up with Petacci, Catroux tells him. “I will deal with you later, private Petacci.”

Petacci falls in with the rest of the men, and the seven of them run as fast as they can after the camels that have disappeared behind the nearest dune with their tails in the air. A strong gust of wind catches up with them and hits them in their backs with such violence that they nearly lose their balance. They know exactly what this means. It is the strong gusts before the real storm hits. They forget their exhaustion, thirst, parched throats, and sweat that burns their eyes. The only thing they care about now is the world around them that has gone dangerous and dark, although the sun is still high. It will be dark as night falls briefly, and then all hell will break loose. The wind will whistle high around them, carrying the sand and stones before it, singing in the eerie darkness. They stumble over the peak of the first dune that nearly appears alive as the wind blows the sand away. They descend the first dune and go stumbling up the next one. Then, far in front of them, they see the two camel riders disappearing over the comb of a dune.

“Is this enough action for you?” Fritz Mundt asks, gasping at Podolski, but the Pole does not answer because now is not the time for jokes. They hear the deep thunder as if the earth is tearing open and massive waves engulf the world around them.

In times like these, even the most hardened of men tend to lose their sense of humor, and everyone is busy with his thoughts. They all remember happier times when they were still safe and secure and visions of the past fleet through their minds. The memories get driven out again by fear when they hear the Sahara wind singing high and loud, like the strumming of a guitar string in utter silence.

“I wish I were rather in Fort Laval right now, and it must be the only time in my life that I have wished to be in that horrible place,” Jack Ritchie says bitingly while running. They all hate Fort Laval, that terrible hole hundreds of miles away from Dini Salam. Fort Laval is the most distant fort of the French Foreign Legion here in the southeastern Sahara. It is where thirty of them, together with lieutenant Juin, with the pink cheeks, had to stay for three months before being relieved and sent back to Dini Salam, the garrison town.

“I think I can be happy at any place right now, except here,” Teuns Stegmann confesses.

Their hands, necks, and cheeks start to burn as if small sparks are blowing on them. It is the first of the fine sand grains that have reached them at a very high speed. The wind lets off, and they keep running forward in the unbearable heat. It is like being in a narrow space where someone has lit a fire. They look back but quickly look forward again because what they see scares them terribly. The big wind has hanged a swaying, churning, purple curtain in front of the sun. Where the sun should be, is only a dim light, like when the moon sometimes sails behind a thick bank of clouds. They cease running and walk for a while before starting to run again. It is getting ever darker. Then they run, then they walk...

“So where were you running off to, old ram?” Teuns asks Petacci.

“If you had started running when I started, we would have been much further now,” the Italian defends himself.

“Must have been on his way to Rome,” Podolski quips. The wind grabs Jorgensen’s kepi and flings it out in front of him, and he chases it on all fours and manages to retrieve it again. The men scramble and struggle over the peak of yet another dune, and then Catroux halts. His breath is coming in short gasps, and he shouts out hoarsely. “We are saved mes amis!”

mes amisOn the plain, about a mile in the distance, they can make out a dim cluster of trees and the outline of a couple of clay huts. It is a small oasis that does not even appear on the French Foreign Legion’s map.

“Looks to me as if Petacci has a sixth sense,” Fritz Mundt finds. “It would have been a big tragedy if he had saved himself and the rest of us had died.”

“If we had not noticed the camels, I wonder what would have happened to us,” says Catroux and looks behind him. A couple of miles behind them, the dust is boiling on the horizon, like steam would if the sun hit the ocean’s surface.

“There is not much time left!” yells Catroux, leading the men to fall and jump down the steep dune. But, there in front of them, the two camel riders have already disappeared between the huts, and now the wind is like a strong wall, blowing directly and harshly against their backs, and sometimes they are running, and sometimes they are airborne when the wind lifts them in short bursts.

A strong gust of wind lifts Catroux and throws the little man face forward into the sand. The men struggle to lift him because their hands move sluggishly and are problematic in the wind’s force.

As soon as Catroux is on his feet again, he orders his men. “Keep the direction of the oasis in your line of sight at all times because we will have to approach it directly. Full dark is nearly upon us.”

They keep their eyes on the huts vanishing in the thickening darkness as they move forward again. They also watch the palm trees because they know that in a Sahara sandstorm, you can easily miss a place even from five steps away.

The wind picks Petacci up, bends him, and throws him forward. Teuns Stegmann and Fritz Mundt manage to grab his arms, help him up and keep on holding on to him. Catroux, Jack Ritchie, Podolski, and Jorgensen do the same and hold on to one another while moving through the wind. You must hold onto something or someone because the wind’s absolute power will thrust you forward like a leave.

They jog blindly now because they are too tired to run anymore, and now and then, the wind will lift them from their feet. Finally, they reach the clay huts and opt for the middle one. They see a dark spot that has to be the door, which is good because it faces northeast, nearly downwind.

“Just a couple more steps!” Catroux shouts over the wind. The hut is right in front of them, but the wind picks them up again and drives them past the hut. They hit the ground and start crawling back slowly. It is now full darkness, and the sand and stones bombard their faces and hands like hot flames.

Eventually, they reach the door by moving flat on the ground. They enter the hut one by one and crawl inside, coughing, choking, and nearly smothering.

The hut was built low and flat to withstand storms like this. The hut shudders in the full-force gale, and Catroux calls out his men’s names to ensure everyone is inside. Luckily all have made it. Suddenly they realize they are not the only people inside the hut. They can hear someone groaning, like someone hallucinating, and they know that it cannot be the two camel riders because they have seen them sheltering behind another hut with their camels.