"Rat or Super Rat" first appeared in The Crusader, circa 1945 and was written by Capt. Sydney Robinson, better known to the Eighth Army as Syd Robinson, creator of George Gumption. It was later reprinted in the Northern Daily Telegraph and sent to us by Bob Walker a member from North Shields, via our then President, Bob Garratt. Thanks to both Bobs

Rat or Super Rat

A year ago, if you'd called me "a Rat" I'd have taken umbrage...to say the least. Now you've only to call me a Rat to see my face light up with honest satisfaction. Providing, of course, that you prefix the word "Rat" with the word "Desert". You see I am mighty proud of being a Desert Rat. Or, in other words, of being a member of the 8th Army, that tough, hard-punching, happy force which drove Rommel from Egypt to the hills of Tunisia; the same force that has been praised by soldier and civilian alike.

What is a Desert Rat? Well, the real rat, who was skipping his light-hearted way around the desert for countless generations before our rumbling tanks sent him shivering down his hole, is a quaint, likeable little chap. He is a jerboa, pert native desert rodent, of the size of a small rat, with big ears, long back legs and short front ones, so that he looks for all the world like a sandy-coloured miniature kangaroo. And what of his human counterpart?. As far as I can see, he has only two things in common with the real Mr. Rat; the ability to sense danger when it's only a distant threat, and the gift of sleeping satisfactorily and comfortably in a hole.

Yet he who claims Rattery must be made of many parts.  No other society in the world has such cast-iron and unassailable laws as those that bind the brotherhood of Desert Rats. Your Desert Rat learnt his warfare in that hitter, dreary stretch of Northern Africa which he grew to know as "The Blue". And if you are a Desert Rat you must know what it is to live in scorching days and freezing nights. You must know what it is to drive along desert tracks, with your month and eyes full of dust and your muscles tight with weariness. You must know what it is to be pestered by bombs and strafing by night, and flies and Stukas by day. The flies, perhaps, being the worst of these miseries.

There are many more rules of admittance to Ratdom than I have space for here. They crowd to my memory. Any aspirant to Rattery must have known the compensating bliss, when body was weary and mind apathetic, of a letter from a loved one at home. The deep satisfaction of a dip in blue sea from white sands. The calm luxury of a film shown miraculously by a mobile cinema on the side of an L.A.D. truck drawn up in the middle of miles of measureless sand. The soothing contentment of a cup of sweet, steaming tea, self-brewed on a petrol-cum-sand fire by some dusty track-side. You must have seen the shrapnel-pocked buildings of Alamein station, and the cutaway edge of Ruweisat that was obviously known as Beachy Head. You must have known where Bombay Road led to, and Sydney Road. You must have known the ruins of Sidi Barran, and the large slab of nothing that is unaccountably called Buq Buq. You must have known that breath-taking view over the sea from Halfaya Pass or Solltun Hill. You must have known Bardia and shattered Tobruk, Mersa Matruh, and the green Jebel, Daba and Fuka, where the sandstorms are almost beyond endurance, and colourful Benghazi. You must have driven under Marble Arch, with its carvings and commanding mass, set up by the Ities on the border of Tripolitania, and standing in the middle of miles of dreary nothingness, a pathetic memorial to Italian aspirations.

Other places you must have known - Tripoli, goal of years reached at last in triumph, Ben Gardan, with its beehive huts, Mareth, Sfax, Sousse   and so on. One can go on for ever talking of these places, which are just names to you at home, but which hold memories for Desert Rats which they will never forget. Mind you, there are degrees of Rattery. The old-timers will tell you that the only real Desert Rat is he who has served in all the desert campaigns, who has seen all the shuttlecock fighting. There are many of these super-rats, and let due honour be given to them. They fought nobly and well, often in adversity, and they passed on the secrets they had learned to fledgling rats as they came timidly into the Blue from the base. But their rules necessarily must be far too exalted for the general brotherhood of Desert Rats.

The Rats will pass on to other fields. But when the fight is done, and they go home to take their just share of the peace for which they have striven, their most vivid memories, I'll wager, will be of "The Blue". The Brotherhood of Rats, founded in grim desert, will last until the Rats themselves are grey and toothless. So, when they come home, if you want to make these desert warriors well disposed towards you, call them rats. But don't, please, forget to add "Desert".