The Will of the Fighting Nation

Chapter 73 The Will of the Fighting Nation

The southern salt flats gleamed with a greyish-white light under the starlight, like a snowfield forgotten by time. The ground was cracked into irregular polygons, the cracks filled with fine sand that made a soft, crunching sound when stepped on, as if crushing the bones of some ancient creature.

The first group of fifty men were already crouching on the edge of the saline-alkali land, awaiting orders to depart. They carried rifles, ammunition, canteens, and ration bags; some also carried entrenching tools, while others had rolled-up blankets slung over their shoulders. No one spoke, no one smoked, no one made a sound. They were like fifty stones, silently embedded on the invisible boundary between the desert and the saline-alkali land.

Leading the group was a sergeant, in his forties, with a scar on his face that ran from his left eyebrow to his right jaw—a remnant of the Battle of El Alamein. His compass hung around his neck, tied with a shoelace; the glass of the compass was cracked, but the needle still moved. Behind him followed a young private, no more than eighteen or nineteen, with a wisp of fine beard just beginning to grow on his lip, his rifle longer than his arm. His canteen was only half full, and the sergeant offered him his own to fill. The young private shook his head. The sergeant said nothing, putting the canteen back into his backpack.

At exactly three o'clock, the sergeant stood up and waved to those behind him. The fifty men followed suit, standing up like puppets on a single string. They began to walk forward, into the salt flats. The ground was hard, leaving almost no footprints, only the soft rustling of their shoes against the salt crust. The sound was faint and dense, like countless silkworms nibbling on mulberry leaves. The man at the front walked slowly, stopping every few steps to glance at his compass and adjust his course. The others followed him perfectly, step by step.

They walked one kilometer, two kilometers, three kilometers. The saline-alkali land softened slowly beneath their feet, the salt crust thinned, and more and more sand appeared, its color changing from grayish-white to light yellow, then to deep yellow. By the fifth kilometer, the saline-alkali land had completely disappeared, leaving only pure sand beneath their feet, as fine as flour, sinking to their ankles when stepped on. The sergeant slowed his pace. He glanced back at the people behind him; they were still following him, all present, though their breathing grew heavier.

He stopped and waited for the people behind him to gather. He took a piece of dry rations from his pocket, broke it in half, and handed the larger half to the young private next to him. The young private shook his head again. The sergeant stuffed the rations into his hand, turned around, and continued walking.

No one has fallen behind. At least not yet.

As the first wave of people began to emerge from the saline-alkali land south of the city, activity also picked up in the north. A small group of about three hundred men began to assemble behind the sand dunes north of the city. They made no attempt to conceal their presence, even deliberately creating some noise. Some deliberately let ammunition boxes roll down the dunes, producing a dull thud. Others turned up the volume while adjusting their radios, letting the crackling of the current drift in the night wind. Some even squatted atop the dunes smoking, the glow of their cigarettes flickering in the darkness, a clear sign of provocation.

The British observation post quickly spotted the commotion. The post, located on a hill five kilometers north of the city, was manned by three men, equipped with a gun sniper scope and a radio. The soldier on duty was dozing when his comrade nudged him awake.

"There's some noise," his companion said.

The soldier on duty approached the artillery scope and adjusted the focus. Through the scope, he saw dark figures moving behind the sand dunes north of Agaira. It was a group of dark figures, moving back and forth along the ridgeline of the dunes like ants carrying food. He saw people carrying things from one dune to another, and he saw vehicles moving slowly behind the dunes. The headlights were obscured, but the sound of the engines could be faintly heard.

"The Germans are running away," he said.

Radio waves traveled from the observation post to the brigade command, from the brigade command to the division command, and from the division command to the general command. Loran was woken from his cot by the duty officer at 3:40 a.m. He put on his coat and went into the command tent. The tent was already lit, and several staff officers were gathered around a table with a map spread out on it, weighed down with several stones.

"There's movement in the north of the city," the duty officer said. "The scouts report that a large number of people and vehicles are moving north of the city, possibly attempting to break out eastward along the coastal highway."

Loran walked to the map and glanced at the terrain north of the city. The coastal highway passed through the north of Agaira, extending eastward along the coastline, merging with the main road leading to Benghazi after bypassing a salt marsh. If Rommel wanted to break out, going north of the city was indeed the most reasonable choice. The terrain was relatively flat, vehicles could travel there, and going east was German-controlled territory. Once they broke through the British encirclement, there would be open ground ahead.

But Lorraine felt that something was off.

He stood before the map, staring at the crooked contour lines for a while. The terrain north of the city was too open, too open for a nighttime breakout. The British had deployed sufficient troops in the north of the city—tanks, armored vehicles,

Anti-tank guns were all available. Rommel couldn't have been unaware of this. He knew better than anyone that breaking out at night in open terrain against an enemy force with superior armor would be tantamount to suicide.

Unless he has other plans.

"What about the south of the city?" Loran asked.

The duty officer paused, taken aback. "South of the city?"

"What's going on in the south of the city?"

The duty officer flipped through the reports on the table. "Nothing. The south side of the city is very quiet."

Lorraine frowned. The south of the city was saline-alkali land, impassable for tanks and vehicles. The British had only deployed a small number of infantry there, making their defenses very thin. If Rommel wanted to break out from the south, he wouldn't need to face tanks, only infantry. But the saline-alkali land was unsuitable for vehicles; his tanks, trucks, and artillery couldn't get through. If he broke out from the south, he would have to abandon all his heavy equipment, carrying only rifles and light machine guns, and trek dozens of kilometers through saline-alkali land and desert.

But then Loran thought again: Did Rommel have any more heavy equipment? His fuel was already used up, and the tanks were basically scrap metal. Since there was no fuel, the tanks couldn't be taken away; if they tried to break out, they would have to abandon them.

Loran tapped his fingers on the gray area south of the city. Salt flats, and further south, desert—a true desert, with no roads, no water, and no people. Of those who ventured into that desert, three out of ten would be incredibly lucky to survive. Would Rommel take that route?

He remembered something. Many years ago, he had read a book about Napoleon's Egyptian campaign. Napoleon's army marched for a long time in the desert, without water or food. The soldiers began to go mad, hallucinate, and kill each other. In the end, only half of them made it out of the desert. There was a sentence in that book that Lorraine remembered for many years.

"The desert is not a battlefield, the desert is a graveyard."

Would Rommel send his soldiers to their graves?

He thought about it. Yes, they would. If those soldiers were German, they would. German soldiers were different from other soldiers. Other soldiers would die if they went into the desert, but German soldiers might come out alive. Because they had discipline, willpower, and something the British would never understand—something that turned obedience and endurance into a faith.

Loran looked up. "Send a scout platoon to check the south of the city. Be quick."

The reconnaissance platoon set off. Three armored vehicles, fifty men, searched westward along the southern edge of the city. After about half an hour, news came over the radio that a large number of fresh footprints had been discovered in the saline-alkali land south of the city, stretching southward as far as the eye could see.

Lorraine's hands clenched tightly on the edge of the table.

"How many people?" he asked.

There was a few seconds of silence on the other end of the radio. "Many. Countless. The footprints covered the entire saline-alkali land, as if an entire army had marched through here."

Silence fell over the command tent. The staff officers exchanged glances, unsure what to say. Loran stood there, staring at the southern part of the city on the map. The grayish-white area gleamed coldly in the kerosene lamplight, like a frozen sea.

He suddenly understood.

The commotion north of the city was a feint. The shadowy figures moving back and forth, the deliberately made noises, the cigarette butts flickering on the dunes—all were decoys. Rommel was using a small force of three hundred men to draw the attention of the entire British army, allowing the main force to break out from the south of the city.

It wasn't a breakout, it was an escape. It wasn't an escape, it was a retreat. It wasn't a retreat; he couldn't find a precise word to describe it.

Sixty thousand men, divided into groups of fifty, trekked across salt flats and deserts. No vehicles, no tanks, no artillery, only their own two legs, a compass, a canteen of water, and rations brought from Agailah. It was a gamble: whether the soldiers' legs could traverse hundreds of kilometers of desert, whether their wills could withstand hunger and exhaustion, and whether fate, or perhaps God, would be on their side.

Loran stepped out of the tent and stood atop the dune. A dark red light was slowly brightening on the eastern horizon, like a wound that was healing.

He raised his binoculars and looked south of the city. The saline-alkali land shimmered with a grayish-white light in the morning, as flat as a mirror. Something was moving on the surface, tiny and far away, like ants crawling. He adjusted the focus, and the ants became clearer—many, many people, in loose columns, slowly moving south across the saline-alkali land. They moved slowly but steadily, like a gray-black river flowing silently across the gray-white plain.

A river made up of people.

Loran lowered his binoculars and stood there, silent for a long time. The wind blew, carrying the dry, pungent smell of the desert, ruffling his hair. He remembered the question Campbell had asked him yesterday: "Can we win?" He hadn't answered then, because he didn't know how. Now he knew.

They could have won. But they didn't.

You can defeat the Germans on the battlefield; you can blow up their tanks, sink their warships, and capture their positions. But you can't break them. Because they possess something stronger than tanks, more powerful than warships, and more fortified than defensive positions. That is will. A will that can turn 60,000 men into a river.

Loran turned and walked back to the tent. He went to the table, picked up a pencil, and drew a large arrow on the map pointing south of the city. The arrow pointed south, towards the desert, towards that barren wasteland without roads or water.

"Chase them," he said. "Chase them as fast as you can."

But when he said this, his voice lacked confidence. Because he knew he couldn't catch up.

Spiritually, you can't catch up with a group of people who have already disregarded life and death. You can't catch up with a group of people who have walked into the desert, into death, into something you can never understand.

Realistically speaking, the British army could not establish a supply line as numerous as a shower of flowers. In the vast desert, a long and tangled supply line would be fatal.

Daylight broke. The sun rose from the east, turning the entire desert golden. On the salt flats south of the city, the gray-black river still flowed, growing farther and farther away, thinner and thinner, until it finally disappeared behind the golden horizon.

Loran stood atop the dune, gazing in the direction the river disappeared. Behind him, British tanks began to rev their engines, their tracks grinding through the sand, kicking up clouds of yellow dust. Scouts shouted, officers gave orders, and soldiers ran. Everything was moving, everything was making noise, everything was desperately chasing after something.

But he knew they were already far away.

Sixty thousand men, divided into twelve hundred groups, marched from the same city in the same direction on the same night. There were no orders, no slogans, no military songs, only the silent sound of footsteps and the slightly trembling pointer of a compass. They traversed salt flats, sand dunes, dry valleys, and scree slopes. Where they went, there were no roads, but after they passed, roads appeared.

A road paved with footprints stretches from Agaira into the depths of the desert, to the horizon, to where the sun rises.

Lorraine later wrote this in his memoir.

"That morning, I stood on the sand dune and watched the Germans march south. They moved slowly but steadily, like a swarm of ants moving house. It suddenly occurred to me that when ants move house, not a single ant falls behind. They follow the scent left by the ant in front of them, one after another, until they all reach the new nest. I don't know what the Germans used to navigate; maybe a compass, maybe the stars, maybe something more reliable than a compass or the stars. All I know is that that morning, what I saw was not an army retreating, but a nation moving."

"After that day, I was completely shocked by the will of the German soldiers."

On the saline-alkali land south of the city, the last group of German soldiers began their march in the morning light. They walked slower than those ahead of them, for some were wounded, some were sick, and some hadn't had a proper meal for days. But they kept going. Using their rifles as crutches, they supported each other, taking one step at a time. The last man at the rear was a lieutenant, his leg wounded and bandaged, his face twitching with every step. His canteen was empty, and his ration bag was shrunken, for they were wounded, but he didn't complain. His rifle was still slung over his shoulder, its barrel gleaming.

He stopped and glanced back at the city of Agairah. The city's mosque's dome peeked out in the morning light, a pigeon preening its feathers atop it. He watched for a few seconds, then turned and continued walking.

In the city of Agaira, von Waldenfels stood in the courtyard of the mosque, watching the last batch of soldiers disappear into the alleyway at the south end of the city. He clutched a list in his hand, listing the number, number of men, and name of each group leader. He folded the list, stuffed it into his breast pocket, then drew his pistol from his waist and fired three shots into the air.

The gunshots echoed for a long time in the empty city.

That was the signal to depart, and also the signal to say goodbye.

He was the only one left in the courtyard. He stood there, looking at the abandoned tanks, cannons, and trucks. They were parked crookedly in the alleys, in the squares, and along the streets, like a group of giant beasts stripped of their skeletons. He remembered Rommel's words from yesterday: "Tanks lost can be rebuilt. Fuel gone can be transported again. But as long as we have people, as long as we have a breath left, we haven't lost."

Yes, they hadn't lost yet. But Waldenfels refused to admit defeat; he wanted to fight to the death with the soldiers north of the city.

He turned and walked towards the south of the city. His legs were a little weak, but his back was very straight. He walked through an alley, where a woman was still sitting at the entrance, holding an infant in her arms. The baby was dead, its body stiff, its face covered with a fine layer of sand. The woman was still gently rocking it, humming the song whose lyrics he couldn't understand.

Von Waldenfels stopped and glanced at her. He took the last piece of dry rations from his pocket, placed it at her feet, and continued walking.

He walked out of the alley south of the city and into the salt flats. The morning light spread behind him, stretching his shadow long and thin. He looked up at the gray-black river ahead. The river was still flowing, still heading south, still going deeper into the desert.

He quickened his pace and caught up with him.

The salt flats crunched softly beneath his feet, like something cracking. But he knew it wasn't the salt flats that were cracking; it was something harder, something older. The confidence the British had built up over three years—they believed that if they besieged a city, cut off its supply lines, blew up all the roads, and filled in all the wells, the people inside would surrender.

But they forgot that the city was inhabited by Germans.

The Germans will not surrender. They will go into the desert, into death, into the barren wasteland where there are no roads or water, and then emerge from the other side of the wasteland like ghosts crawling out of hell, standing before you again, gun in hand, eyes gleaming.