The book of the Film - ICE COLD IN ALEX

 

The book by Christopher Landon was published in 1957. The film was released the following year, with a screenplay by Landon and T.J. Morrison.

Briefly, Captain Anson (film: John Mills) of the Royal Army Service Corps Motor Ambulance Company is serving in Tobruk. He’s battle-weary and has turned to alcohol. The German Afrika Korps is due to take the city, so they all evacuate but in the confusion two nurses, Sisters Diana Murdoch (Sylvia Syms) and Denise Norton (Diane Clare) are left behind. Anson with Mechanist Sergeant Major Tom Pugh (Harry Andrews) take the sisters in their Austin K2/Y ambulance (nicknamed ‘Katy’). Separated from the rest of the evacuation vehicles, they set off across the desert to Alexandria (Alex). Shortly, they encounter a South African officer of the Union Defence Force (UDF), Captain Zimmerman. In the film he is named van der Poel (Anthony Quail).

Anson swears off alcohol even though Zimmerman carries several bottles of spirits in his pack. He declares he won’t touch a drop until they get to Alex.

There are a number of tense scenes in the book: crossing a minefield, a broken suspension spring which requires the formidable strength of Zimmerman to support the axel while they shove rocks underneath, the crossing of the Qattara Depression, a fatal attack by a German patrol, and a dangerous immersion in quicksand. All these sequences were dramatized at greater length and to good effect in the film. Two marked differences in the film are: the betrayal is signposted much earlier in the book, and Diana’s romantic interest is not Anson but Pugh.

It’s probably not a spoiler to reveal that, after many trials and tribulations, they do get to the bar in Alex! The cover image from the film reveals it, after all. The lager they drink is Rheingold (an American beer); of course in the film they drank the Danish beer Carlsberg; real beer was used and after several ‘takes’ Mills confessed to being rather giddy.

One of the German officers who waylaid them was played by Walter Gotell, who went on to appear in many James Bond movies.

Landon’s prose is reminiscent of Hemingway, very spare and direct. The viewpoint changes for (mostly) chapter-lengths from Anson, to Diana, Zimmerman and mainly Pugh. It is obvious from his descriptions that Landon had served in North Africa, which is the case. He wrote several novels and, sadly, died from accidental alcohol and barbiturate poisoning in 1961, aged 50.

If you’ve seen the film, you’ll still enjoy the book.

Saturday Story - 'A Shared Experience'

A SHARED EXPERIENCE

  

Nik Morton

A story for Easter

 

My brethren once numbered in the millions.  But that was a long time ago.

Racial memory tells me of great apes who could swing through our forests from dawn until dusk for many days, seemingly without end. 

Now, though, there are no forests here, and no great apes.  Only desert. Our memory goes back even further than mankind's.  We trees share in each other's experiences, down the years, until perhaps the last tree is no more.

            The decimation of our kind began when men started to build ships.  The Phoenicians, the Greeks and Romans, the Turks, all amassed formidable fleets at the expense of our great forests in North Africa. 

Denuded of trees, the land degenerated into desert.

Through our worldwide network we have learned all of mankind's languages, though some of their naming-words are beyond our combined experience: it is a veritable Babel - that's a term from one of their great books.

Unlike we brethren of the green, mankind forgot how to commune through the ether; and they never harnessed a racial memory.  Instead they discovered the transmission of thoughts by written means, first on stone then papyrus and parchment and paper made from our wood.  This written medium enabled them to communicate from beyond the grave: they considered that these invented books were a kind of immortality. 

            And, inevitably, their hunger for printed words took its toll on our brethren too.

            I remember so much, as do we all.  Our lives do not stop when we are felled.  Our senses enter another, different phase, that is all.  We can still perceive through our pores, detecting sounds, smells, temperatures and even, sometimes, thoughts.  If fire takes one of us while we are rooted in the earth, then that tree is no more; but its experience of the world is not lost, its soul is within us all.

* 

The carpenter's hands were gentle, almost loving as he shaped a part of me into a baby's crib.  He was a gifted artisan and though I was shaved into many separate pieces I could not blame him: out of my natural perfection he carved another beautiful form.  A part of my life would share in the growth of another being, imbibing the infant's intellectual awakening.

Other parts of me were transported around the land of Galilee, bartered for and even sometimes fought over.  One beam that was me became soaked in a foolish man's blood: the stain seemed to sum up so much of our relationship with mankind. 

In exchange for the decimation of our millions we shared in new experiences and feelings.

            Another part of me encountered that same carpenter a number of years later.  His blood stained me too as he painfully struggled to carry me on his back up the hill to Golgotha. 

            Strangely, I ached, as did we all in his shared experience, as we sensed the carpenter's agony.

Yet there was no hate in him.  He was strong: I could feel a power capable of felling all our kind at an instant's thought.  But he was in control.  He knew what he was doing.  His purpose was steadfast, inspiring.

All my brethren in the vicinity swayed as the precursor of a storm whipped their leaves.  This was something we had never known before. 

Of all the multitudes of people who had impinged on our very old memory, none had affected us like this man.

When they crucified the carpenter, nailing his wrists into my wood, and his essence mingled with my own, I knew that no matter what privations our brethren suffered, we would survive and even flourish. 

A time would come when trees would be nurtured in their own habitat. 

It would take a long time in arriving, but it would come to pass.

            And I know one day I shall see that carpenter again.

 

***

Previously published in the Easter edition of the Costa TV Times, 2010.

Copyright Nik Morton, 2014.

***

My collection of Spanish themed crime short stories, Spanish Eye, is available from Crooked Cat Publishing.

 

Spanish Eye, which can be purchased post-free world-wide from here

and the Spanish Eye e-book bought from Amazon com here

or bought from Amazon co uk here

 

 

 

 

‘Straitened times’

Spanish Eye contains 22 cases from Leon Cazador, half-English, half-Spanish private eye.  Its release date is 29 November, from Crooked Cat Publishing.

The vast majority of these cases are based on true events…  The short story ‘Adopted Country’ was first published in magazine format in 2006: here is a very brief excerpt:

 

Adopted Country

“...treat cynically with the impoverished to further their dark ends.”

 

On a clear day like today, I felt I could almost reach out and touch Africa. I stood alongside my brother, Juan, on the seashore of Tarifa, Spain’s southernmost tip. Juan was the Guardia Civil officer supervising the capture of yet another boatload of illegal immigrants.

Earlier, squinting out to sea as the Guardia Civil launch intercepted the over-laden longboat, Juan had said, “It isn’t surprising, Leon, is it? North Africa is only fourteen kilometres away from where we stand. They want an easier and better life here in Europe so they’ll risk everything in the attempt.”

“No, Juan, it isn’t surprising.”

Now, I watched with a heavy heart as medical teams and officials, flanked by Juan’s men, swooped on the women, men and children who clambered wearily from the beached vessel. The area was ring-fenced with police carrying machine guns.

It was a motley collection of humanity: pregnant women with hypothermia, children whose ribcages were visible through the taut skin, and once-strong lithe men with exhausted faces and wary eyes. A short distance, but often a treacherous journey. Even though they were staring down the barrels of guns, these were the lucky ones. Countless people died making the crossing every year. Desperation does that.

Since my country’s agreement with Morocco and the erection of barbed wire along the common border, it is now virtually impossible to enter Spain through the Ceuta route. So thousands go further along the North African coast and pay their entire savings to board any old boat that will sail for Tarifa or some other beach along the southern coast of Spain. Thousands even attempt the seven hundred mile crossing to the Canary Islands, and many more perish in the attempt.

Sadly, over forty years of independence hasn’t made the African nations a better and safer place to live. All kinds of bloodletting conflict has left the land poorer and thrust millions on the asylum-seeking trail.

Well, I said it was brief…

From time to time Guardia Civil reports echo the Cazador tales, and this is but one of them, from the Costa Blanca News of September 30, 2013:

 

Often, these days, illegal immigrants attempt to cross from North Africa to Spain (and Italy and France). This is a growing problem because of the unsettled state of the Dark Continent and the war-threatened north African countries. Why Cazador is there and what happens next, well, please read the book…

Spanish Eye paperback post-free worldwide here

 

Kindle UK - here

Kindle Amazon com here