Meggie leaned over to peck her brothers on their cheeks self-consciously, then did the same to Cormac, who looked just like his oldest brother, Connor; Bob, Jack and Hughie wrung three different young hands; Mrs. Smith, weeping, was the only one who did the kissing and cuddling everyone was dying to do. Eden Carmichael, his wife and aging but still handsome daughter with him, went through the same formalities. Then everyone was outside on the Gilly platform, the train was jerking against its buffers and creeping forward. "Goodbye, goodbye!" everyone called, and waved big white handkerchiefs until the train was a smoky streak in the shimmering sunset distance. Together as they had requested, Jims and Patsy were gazetted to the raw, half-trained Ninth Australian Division and shipped to Egypt at the beginning of 1941, just in time to become a part of the rout at Benghazi. The newly arrived General Erwin Rommel had put his formidable weight on the Axis end of the seesaw and begun the first reversal of direction in the great cycling rushes back and forth across North Africa. And, while the rest of the British forces retreated ignominiously ahead of the new Afrika Korps back to Egypt, the Ninth Australian Division was detailed to occupy and hold Tobruk, an outpost in Axis-held territory. The only thing which made the plan feasible was that it was still accessible by sea and could be supplied as long as British ships could move in the Mediterranean. The Rats of Tobruk holed up for eight months, and saw action after action as Rommel threw everything he had at them from time to, time, without managing to dislodge them.
"Do youse know why youse is here?" asked Private Col Stuart, licking the paper on his cigarette and rolling it shut lazily. Sergeant Bob Malloy shifted his Digger hat far enough upward to see his questioner from under its brim. "Shit, no," he said, grinning; it was an oft-asked query.
"Well, it's better than whiting gaiters in the bloody glasshouse," said Private Jims Cleary, pulling his twin brother's shorts down a little so he could rest his head comfortably on soft warm belly. "Yair, but in the glasshouse youse don't keep getting shot at," objected Col, flicking his dead match at a sunbathing lizard. "I know this much, mate," said Bob, rearranging his hat to shade his eyes. "I'd rather get shot at than die of fuckin' boredom."
They were comfortably, disposed in a dry, gravelly dugout just opposite the mines and barbed wire which cut off the southwest corner of the perimeter; on the other side Rommel hung doggedly on to his single piece of the Tobruk territory. A big .50-caliber Browning machine gun shared the hole with them, cases of ammunition neatly beside it, but no one seemed very energetic or interested in the possibility of attack. Their rifles were propped against one wall, bayonets glittering in the brilliant Tobruk sun. Flies buzzed everywhere, but all four were Australian bushmen, so Tobruk and North Africa held no surprises in the way of heat, dust or flies. "Just as well youse is twins, Jims," said Col, throwing pebbles at the lizard, which didn't seem disposed to move. "Youse look like a pair of poofters, all tied up together." "You're just jealous." Jims grinned, stroking Patsy's belly. "Patsy's the best pillow in Tobruk."
"Yair, all right for you, but what about poor Patsy? Go on, Harpo, say something!" Bob teased.
Patsy's white teeth appeared in a smile, but as usual he remained silent. Everyone had tried to get him to talk, but no one had ever succeeded beyond an essential yes or no; in consequence nearly everyone called him Harpo, after the voiceless Marx brother.
"Hear the news?" asked Col suddenly.
"What?"
"The Seventh's Matildas got plastered by the eightyeights at Halfaya. Only gun in the desert big enough to wipe out a Matilda. Went through them big buggers of tanks like a dose of salts."
"Oh, yeah, tell me another!" said Bob skeptically. "I'm a sergeant and I never heard a whisper, you're a private and you know all about it. Well, mate, there's just nothing Jerry's got capable of wiping out a brigade of Matildas."
"I was in Morshead's tent on a message from the CO when I heard it come through on the wireless, and it is true," Col maintained. For a while no one spoke; it was necessary to every inhabitant of a beleaguered outpost like Tobruk that he believe implicitly his own side had sufficient military thrust to get him out. Col's news wasn't very welcome, more so because not one soldier in Tobruk held Rommel lightly. They had resisted his efforts to blow them out because they genuinely believed the Australian fighting man had no peer save a Gurkha, and if faith is nine-tenths of power, they had certainly proved themselves formidable. "Bloody Poms," said Jims. "What we need in North Africa is more Aussies." The chorus of agreement was interrupted by an explosion on the rim of the dugout which blew the lizard into nothing and sent the four soldiers diving for the machine gun and their rifles. "Fuckin' Dago grenade, all splinters and no punch," Bob said with a sigh of relief. "If that was a Hitler special we'd be playing our harps for sure, and wouldn't you like that, eh, Patsy?"
At the beginning of Operation Crusader the Ninth Australian Division was evacuated by sea to Cairo, after a weary, bloody siege which seemed to have accomplished nothing. However, while the Ninth had been holed up inside Tobruk, the steadily swelling ranks of British troops in North Africa had become the British Eighth Army, its new commander General Bernard Law Montgomery.