Chapter 161: A Valuable Medicine
The short soldier had already swallowed two mouthfuls of well water.
A heartbeat later, his eyes bulged.
He clutched his throat, staggered backward, and vomited violently onto the sand. The sour mess vanished almost the instant it touched the ground, devoured by the thirsty desert, leaving behind only a foul stench and a trembling man with a face as pale as paper.
The water could not be drunk.
No one knew whether the canteens on the dead men had been filled from that same poisoned well. Even if they were dying of thirst, no one dared to take that gamble.
The squad searched the small settlement in silence.
By the time they finished, their lips were cracked and covered in thick layers of dead skin. Their tongues felt like strips of dried leather. All they found among the bodies and abandoned equipment was a damaged radio, several empty ammunition boxes, and a syringe taken from the pouch of a dead Arab fighter.
"Squad leader," one soldier rasped, holding the syringe up, "do you speak Arabic?"
The squad leader took it from him and turned it over in his hand.
There was fine print on the glass tube.
He could not read Arabic. Not a word.
But beneath the Arabic characters, there was another line.
German.
His brow furrowed.
"Treatment... infection... four hundred thousand units of penicillin injection... for..." He struggled over the last word, then exhaled. "Use."
The squad fell silent.
Their eyes turned, almost at the same time, toward Batu.
The big machine gunner was slumped against a wall, his breathing shallow. The skin around his wound had turned angry red, swollen and hot. Sweat had soaked through the bandage, and each breath seemed to scrape against his ribs.
The squad leader lowered his rifle.
For a moment, he hesitated.
Then he tore open the packaging and pushed the needle into Batu's arm.
The big man groaned, but did not resist.
Such scenes were not isolated.
Across the desert, the same cruel drama repeated itself again and again.
The British soldiers had to contend not only with heat, thirst, quicksand, and the endless harassment of guerrillas, but also with engines that stalled under the sun, tires buried axle-deep in loose sand, rifles clogged with grit, and supply trucks that could vanish between one dune and the next.
The desert did not fight like a civilized army.
It did not form ranks. It did not raise banners. It did not give a man the dignity of seeing his enemy.
It simply swallowed him.
The brutal swing between scorching days and cold nights brought waves of illness. Among the two divisions, more than twenty thousand men struggled to adapt to the climate. Within days, nearly a tenth were sick with fevers, chills, coughs, and exhaustion.
The rest could scarcely catch a glimpse of the guerrillas.
The blinding sunlight and intermittent sandstorms reduced visibility to a few wavering shadows. Sand crept into gun barrels and mechanisms, lowering accuracy again and again. A British rifle might fire straight on the parade ground, but in this land of dust and heat, even skill became unreliable.
When British bullets struck Arab guerrillas, they often missed vital points. The wounded men would vanish into the dunes, return after a few days, and continue the harassment as if nothing had happened.
But if a British soldier was merely grazed by a bullet, the result could be fatal.
Sweat, sand, heat, and the lack of effective medicine turned small wounds into swollen disasters. In less than a day, inflammation and infection could leave a man delirious, useless, or dead.
One week passed.
The two divisions had not advanced an inch.
Instead, fear began to spread.
The soldiers no longer regarded the desert as a battlefield.
They regarded it as a living grave.
They dared not move during the day. At night, their progress was no faster than a crawling snail. Each well might be poisoned. Each abandoned house might be mined. Each dune might hide a marksman with a German rifle and patient eyes.
Most importantly, the soldiers had lost the courage to attack.
Fearing that one stray bullet would mean death by infection, they stopped pursuing the guerrillas. Whenever shots rang out from the darkness, they ducked behind sandbags, vehicles, or half-dug trenches, returning fire blindly but never advancing.
That hesitation was all the Saudi First Division needed.
Under cover of night, the guerrillas began to gather around the British temporary desert stronghold.
The soldiers on the defensive perimeter heard movement, but few dared to expose themselves for too long. A shadow beyond the wire might be a man. It might also be nothing. And if it was a man, firing at him might invite a bullet from somewhere else.
The infiltration went far more smoothly than expected.
Small teams slipped between patrol lines, crawled through shallow depressions in the sand, and reached firing positions close enough to see the lamps inside the camp tents.
Mortar tubes were assembled quietly on the sand.
Two Arabs who had received military training from German officers adjusted the angle, checked the markings, and exchanged a nod.
"Fire."
Bang!
The first shell rose into the night.
It missed the center of the camp and exploded on the left side, but the effect was still devastating.
A large iron water tank ruptured with a deafening crack. Water gushed outward, glittering briefly in the firelight before sinking into the sand.
Shrapnel sliced into a nearby fuel tank.
Gasoline spilled across the ground like a liquid fuse.
The fire that had nearly been extinguished by the water suddenly found new life.
Whoosh!
A dragon of flame raced across the sand.
Then, with a thunderous roar, the entire fuel tank exploded into the air.
A scorching fireball bloomed in the night sky.
Inside the camp, Division Commander Deon Rica had been studying one of the captured injections under lamplight. The explosion threw him from his thoughts. He instinctively ducked beneath the operations table and shouted from underneath it.
"Damn it! What the hell is happening? How did the Arabs get this close?"
No one answered him.
There was no time.
Another shell landed near the barracks.
The blast collapsed several tents, sending canvas, wooden poles, sand, and screaming men tumbling together.
Before Rica could fully understand the situation, a car screeched to a halt outside. His adjutant leaned out from the passenger side, face covered in dust, left hand waving frantically.
"Divisional Commander! Get in, quickly! It is not safe here!"
Rica staggered out in a daze and threw himself into the car.
The vehicle sped away from the burning camp.
On a distant dune, the Arab guerrilla captain had just ordered his men to fire their last shells and prepare to withdraw. Then he noticed the car racing away under the moonlight.
His eyes narrowed.
He called over a sniper and pointed.
"Can you hit it?"
The sniper dropped onto the sand, raised his Mauser 98k, and tracked the moving car through the sights.
The desert wind shifted.
He hesitated for only a second.
Bang!
The bullet did not strike the driver's chest as intended.
Instead, it pierced straight through Rica's abdomen.
The car swerved, but did not stop. It vanished into the night.
The sniper lowered his rifle and shook his head, thinking he had missed.
He had no idea that he had just shot a British divisional commander.
At the same time, in Amman, inside the Anglo-French Joint Army Headquarters, William Keir slammed a telegram onto the operations table.
"Two divisions!"
His roar shook the room.
"An entire month, and they have not advanced an inch! Forget vehicles, even if they had ridden pigs, they would have reached Riyadh by now! And now they ask for air support? Why not ask us to drag submarines onto land while they are at it?"
The officers around the table lowered their heads.
No one dared laugh.
Keir pointed at the communications officer.
"Send a telegram to Division Commander Rica. Tell him that if there is no action next week, I will relieve him of command myself."
Before he could finish, another urgent telegram was placed before him.
Keir snatched it up.
The moment his eyes scanned the message, his expression froze.
"What?"
He looked up sharply.
"I am not seeing things, am I, Jack?"
Adjutant Jack stood rigidly beside him.
"No, sir. You are not seeing things. Division Commander Rica has been wounded. The doctor reports that a bullet pierced his abdominal cavity. His chance of survival is... very low."
For a long moment, Keir said nothing.
The headquarters seemed to grow colder.
At last, he spoke through clenched teeth.
"Do not let this news spread. Do you understand?"
Jack nodded.
"Understood, sir."
Keir threw the telegram onto the table and forced himself to regain control.
"What else?"
Jack opened another file.
"We have matched the source of the Arab weapons. The rifles are German models. The mines and several light weapons have not appeared on the open market, which suggests they are new designs developed in Germany."
"I knew it."
Keir's fist came down hard on the table.
Coffee overturned, spreading across the maps like a brown stain.
"It is Germany. Germany is selling weapons to these Arab fanatics."
His breathing grew heavier.
"What about that medicine?"
"The captured injections were handed to MI6 for examination. Based on the company name printed on the packaging, they were produced by a German firm called Cardolan Pharmaceuticals."
"Of course."
Keir gave a cold laugh.
"So it is not the heaven-sent water those Arabs keep talking about. They did not receive divine mercy. They received German industry."
His mouth twisted in contempt.
"Those people are nothing but dogs wagging their tails at Berlin's feet, waiting for scraps."
After venting his anger, Keir's mind returned at once to the medicine.
His soldiers were rotting from small wounds. Men with fevers filled the docks. The hospitals were crowded with cases that should never have taken so many men out of battle.
If the Arabs could keep fighting because of this drug, then the British Army needed it even more.
"If they have it, we must have it too."
Keir turned to Jack, his voice suddenly colder and more controlled.
"Send word to Buckingham Palace. My soldiers are suffering unbearable losses from heat, infection, and disease. At the docks alone, we could form two regiments from men laid low by scarlet fever and infected wounds."
He leaned over the map, eyes fixed on the burning desert routes toward Riyadh.
"Germany must suspend arms sales. And once I obtain this medicine, I will win this war in less than a month."
.....
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