Robert Morgan sat leaning back against his old Spitfire airplane, wondering if he had made a mistake. Not that he could fix anything, but just wondering for his own peace of mind. But no, he hadn’t. He recalled the aerial battle that for him had just ended in a nameless wadi in North Africa.

Half an hour ago he and his comrades were still providing aerial protection for a convoy of tankers carrying gasoline from Benghazi to Tobruk, for it was useless to advance the front if the blood of war, as gasoline was still called, did not arrive on time. Tanks stopped paralyzed and self-propelled guns stopped paralyzed, so from Benghazi convoy after convoy went to the front line, and Robert and his comrades had to protect them. Rommel, like the desert fox that he was, knew that gasoline was at stake and sent everything he could fly and carry a machine gun to destroy the convoys that were coming with the precious liquid to the front line.

The convoy they were protecting had just passed the small town of Mechili and had about 150 kilometers to Tobruk, when the Germans appeared. They were Messerschmitt 109s, and it was understandable that they should attack on the last stretch of road, for even with extra tanks of gasoline they still could not safely cover the distance from where they took off to where they expected to meet the convoys.

The Germans’ tactic, used in other attacks, was to divide their planes into two groups. One was to keep the fighter planes busy, and the second group was to attack the convoy at all costs and stop it. All they had to do was to set fire to one or two tanks at the head of the convoy and then concentrate on destroying as many British fighters as possible. That was because a second wave of German attack was coming, this time with Stuka attack bombers. As always, the carefully laid plans were thrown into disarray because now the German Messerschmitts changed tactics and engaged in air-to-air combat, determined to clear the skies of British fighters. This meant that Stukas were arriving in small numbers and could not risk being shot down by the British.

Early on, Robert was unlucky enough to be attacked by two enemy aircraft at the same time, but by making a perfect luing he got behind one of the two planes and strafed it at length, with all his armament on board. He was sure he’d shot it down, but he didn’t have time to watch it fall to the ground, for the second plane got into a favorable position and strafed it briefly in passing, then cleared over it to the south.

Robert listened carefully to the engine noise as the German passed him, but there was nothing suspicious. He also glanced at the gasoline level, but it was stable, so he set off in pursuit of the German plane. The speed of the two types of airplanes was somewhat similar, so he didn’t hope to catch up very quickly, but the Messerschmitt had the disadvantage that it had less fuel than he did, so he couldn’t go too far south without running out of time.

The airplane in front of him had to turn either west or, more likely, east, back to the airfield from which it had taken off. The Spitfire had reached a speed of 680 kilometers per hour, probably a little faster than the plane in front of him, because he was getting closer as far as the eye could see, but not quite fast enough. The distance between the two planes was almost a kilometer, but Robert knew that pulling from behind didn’t give him that much of a chance from that distance, so he waited patiently.

Minute after minute passed and the German pilot seemed to have no intention of turning, and Robert, with one eye on the fuel gauge, was just considering whether he should abandon the race and turn back toward the convoy, where he was probably needed.

Just as he was thinking of abandoning, he saw the Messerschmitt make a wide turn to the east, as it was probably nearing its fuel limit. Inherently, as he entered the turn, he had to slow down and Robert fired with all his armament at the airplane in front of him. It wasn’t called a Spitfire for nothing, for the tracers spat out by the eight machine guns on the wings spread like so many fingers of fire towards the enemy and practically blew the fuselage of the plane in front of him, and one of the bursts must have hit the gas tank, for the plane caught fire and began a long fall towards the dunes that seemed to stretch on forever below them. He didn’t see any parachutes, but it didn’t seem fair play to shoot at parachutists anyway, so he turned briefly north and, as he pulled out the map to get a more precise heading, he had a strange feeling that something was wrong. He slowed the engine to listen more closely, but heard nothing out of the ordinary. It wasn’t until he looked down at the fuel gauge and saw how quickly it was dropping that he realized the smell of gasoline was stronger than usual. The German plane’s bullets must have made a crack in the fuel tank. From the machine-gun salvo or the shock of the turn, the crack must have opened wide. And the Messerschmitt had 15 millimeter machine guns, which could punch pretty big holes in a tank.

-Robert whispered to himself and considered the best strategy to get him closer to the Benghazi airfield.

He accelerated to full throttle again, realizing that it wasn’t the engine that would fail, but the gasoline that would run out.

It was a struggle between distance and the fuel gauge needle, and he was sorry he hadn’t looked more closely at the fuel gauge during the run, but he remembered that he had actually looked a couple of times, but he had to keep his eyes on the airplane in front to catch the turn, so he couldn’t pay much attention. He didn’t even realize how far south he’d gone, because at 700 kilometers per hour, in only ten minutes of the flight, he’d traveled over 120 kilometers.

He looked at the map, but there was no oasis to land near in case of emergency. That left Benghazi or, at worst, the road where the battle was fought.

He didn’t have time to do anything else as the fuel gauge suddenly began to drop and a gray trail of gasoline was visible behind the plane. He had to think urgently whether he should choose to parachute or look for a place to land. He would even have preferred a forced landing because it would have brought him a few more kilometers closer to the road, but that was out of his hands.

Everywhere he looked below him, dunes and dunes and dunes, high enough to prevent a safe landing. He descended further and just as the indicator needle reached the bottom, he saw before him a small plateau that ended in a wadi, the dry bed of a river.

He didn’t hesitate any longer, pulled out the landing gear and dropped the airplane toward the slope, which turned out to be rockier than it looked from above. First, the right wheel failed, which propelled him into the wadi bordering the slope, but he didn’t quite fall into it, because the left wheel broke immediately, so the plane landed on the fuselage and quickly lost speed.

There was no gasoline left in the tank, so there was no risk of fire, so after the plane came to a stop, he sighed for a long time and looked around: The Sahara, as he’d seen it perhaps a hundred times from the air, was now all around him ready to swallow him unless he moved fast.

He looked around the cockpit and considered what to take: the map, the compass, the water canister, the two packets of pesticide, the photograph of himself and Melina, the pistol and a spare magazine.

After measuring the distance on the map and seeing that he was exactly 111 km from the nearest point on the road to Tobruk, he put the pistol on the seat. What to do with it? In this part of the Sahara, there were no dangerous wild animals, and the kilogram of pistol and cartridges might prove terribly heavy for the last few kilometers. If he reached his own, the lack of his pistol would be the least of his problems, and if he met the Germans, what could he do against a patrol of well-armed soldiers?

He stepped out of the plane, wrapped his neck scarf around his head as an ephemeral shield against the sun’s rays, and leaned against the fuselage, wondering if he had made a mistake?

No, he had made no mistake. He got here not because he’d done anything wrong, but because of a string of bad luck. And a precise shooting by the pilot of the German airplane. He gasped and got up, realizing that every minute counted, especially now, when he was at full strength. How much could he do in a minute? A hundred meters? Maybe on the sidewalks of London, but not here in the sands of the Sahara.

He didn’t know why, maybe he hadn’t filled it properly on take-off or had drunk from it during the flight, but the water can was only half full. He drank a few sips of warm water, carefully popped the cork in, then started north, trying to refrain from counting his steps, though he was aware that he would eventually end up doing that too.

By the evening he had done quite a bit, but as long as he had a little light he walked on. If it had been a full moon, he might have walked even farther, but only by starlight was risky, as there were plenty of gullies into which he might fall. He made a shelter for himself near a stunted bush, after checking it well for spiders or scorpions among its twisted branches.

He awoke with the first rays of the sun, and, having eaten two jasmine-hard fish, drank the last drops of water from the jerkin, but did not throw it away, hoping to find a spring in some small oasis by the road to replenish his water supply. It had gotten cold overnight and he kept shivering, but he finally managed to fall asleep, but was completely numb in the morning. He made a few quickening movements and set off.

He gritted his teeth and walked all day. He remembered the survival courses all the pilots who were sent to fly over the Sahara had taken.

-Remember the three by three rule! said the man sent to instruct them. A man lasts without air for three minutes, in a blizzard for three hours, and without water for only three days.

He then taught them several methods by which to search for and find water even in the desert, but unfortunately, none of them matched what he had around him.

Toward evening, his mouth was dry with thirst, but he forced himself to eat two pesmitas, even though they increased his thirst terribly. All day he looked all day for some bush that the instructor had told them would point to a spring or at least a trace of dampness where he could dig a hole, hoping that by morning some water would collect.

Nothing, not even an ordinary bush to rest his head against, he found, so he nestled down in the warm sand trying to fall asleep. Still the sun’s rays woke him up the next morning, and he tried to do a tally by looking at the map about how far he had traveled of the 111 kilometers he had to do.

111 kilometers was exactly one degree of latitude and it looked so little on the map, but in reality it seemed to him to be a road that would never end. He was going slower and slower, and he realized that at this rate he would never make the road to Tobruk. He hoped that a patrol would pass by, or that he would see an airplane veering so far south for some reason.

In the evening he was no longer able to look for any bushes, and dropped down at the foot of a dune, and fell into a deep sleep, which seemed to him more like fainting than sleep.

On the third day he awoke not till noon, his mouth parched and dry. His eyes were sore from so much sun, and because the scarf had slipped from his head, it was also beating directly in his eyes. He had a headache and was afraid of sunstroke.

He tried to get up, but he couldn’t keep on his feet and collapsed back on the sand.

“No fair!” he muttered. That instructor said I could go without water for three days, and in my case it wouldn’t have been that long.