最新经济学人双语阅读 | 传奇人生: 沙漠之王迈克·萨德勒

说明: 本篇文章选自最新一期《经济学人》的讣告专栏

想获取最新外刊资源的同学,请加我:

Wind, sand and stars

Mike Sadler guided the first SAS raiders through the North African desert

The navigator and last of the SAS “Originals” died on January 5^th, aged 103

风、沙和星星

迈克·萨德勒（Mike Sadler）引导第一批SAS突击队员穿越北非沙漠

这位航行员——也是SAS“原始成员”中的最后一位，于1月5日去世，享年103岁。

To an American who met Mike Sadler in 1943 his most remarkable feature was his eyes. They were round and sky-blue, staring out of a sun-baked face grizzled with beard. They looked like the eyes of a drug-addled French poet, a man who at any minute might do some crazy thing.

一个1943年遇到迈克·萨德勒的美国人认为他最引人注目的特征是他的眼睛。眼睛圆圆的，天蓝色的，从一个晒得黝黑、留着络腮胡的脸上凝视着。它们看起来像是一个嗑药的法国诗人的眼睛，似乎随时会做出一些疯狂的举动。

In fact, he just had. For five days he had been trudging on foot through 100 miles of Tunisian desert. The SAS group he was with had been caught by the Germans, but he and two others had dropped into gullies and, by nightfall, got clear away. Knowing the lie of the land, and reading the stars, he led them through mountains and between salt lakes until they reached an area controlled by the Free French. A few dates were their only food, and their water a trickle tied in a goatskin. Now his hair was bleached and wild, his exposed skin blistered and his feet in tatters. But, as usual, he had steered his colleagues to safety.

事实上，他刚刚做了一些疯狂的事。他连续五天徒步穿越了100英里的突尼斯沙漠。他所在的SAS小组被德国人抓住了，但他和其他两人跳进沟壑中，到了夜幕降临时便成功摆脱了。凭借对土地的了解和观察星象，他带领他们穿过山脉和盐湖之间，直到他们到达了自由法国控制的区域。他们仅有的食物是几枚枣子，水是用山羊皮囊扎起来的一小股涓涓细流。如今，他的头发被晒得又白又狂野，暴露的皮肤起了水泡，双脚破烂不堪。但像往常一样，他又一次将同事们安全地带了出来。

In the fledgling SAS, founded only two years before, his skills were essential. Their top-secret task was to destroy the Axis bases and airfields strung out along the North African coast. Their modus operandi was to lurk deep in the desert to the south, presumed empty, and attack from behind the enemy lines. His job was to get them there in their customised Willys Jeeps (no top, no windscreen, open to wind, sand and sun) through a pathless landscape littered with boulders and creeping sand dunes hundreds of feet high. Without him, they would have been completely lost.

在成立仅两年的新兵SAS中，他的技能是必不可少的。他们的绝密任务是破坏沿北非海岸线分布的轴心国基地和飞机场。他们的行动方式是潜伏在被认为空无一物的南部沙漠深处，从敌人后面发起攻击。他的工作是驾驶定制的无顶篷、无挡风玻璃的威利斯吉普车（暴露在风、沙和太阳下）通过没有道路、布满巨石和数百英尺高的爬行沙丘的地貌，将他们带到那里。没有他，他们就会完全迷失。

Navigation required both geometry and maths, but at school he was poor at both. He had more of a taste for sheer adventure, whetted by the stories of a classmate at Oakley Hall Prep who had been brought up in Africa with elephants and lions. When war broke out in 1939 he was working on a tobacco farm in Northern Rhodesia (later Zambia), and left it to join an artillery unit. But he was persuaded in a bar in Cairo to join the Long Range Desert Group (LRDG), which provided transport for the SAS and could train him to tell by celestial signs exactly where his position was. It seemed to him a magic art, and the desert like being on the sea in a way. Reading the stars, you could go in any direction, a great sort of freedom. When the war was over he became a keen sailor.

导航需要几何和数学知识，但他在学校时这两门都很差劲。他更喜欢纯粹的冒险，而这份热情是被他在奥克利厅预备学校的一个同学所激起的，那个同学在非洲长大，生活在大象和狮子中。1939年战争爆发时，他在北罗得西亚（后来的赞比亚）的一个烟草农场工作，后来离开了农场加入了一支炮兵部队。但他在开罗的一家酒吧被劝服加入了长途沙漠小组（LRDG），这支小组为SAS提供运输，并能训练他利用天体标志来精确确定自己的位置。这对他而言就像一种魔法，而沙漠在某种程度上就像大海一样。通过观察星星，你可以朝任何方向前进，这是一种很棒的自由。战争结束后，他成了一个热心的航海者。

In the desert, he was also given maps. Some were almost blank, with sparse dotted lines for “suspected camel track”. He used the sun-compass invented by Ralph Bagnold, founder of the LRDG, which showed the sun-shadow in relation to the compass points but had to be constantly adjusted. In any case, they did not travel by day if they could help it. This meant he was up half the night finding suitable stars, taking star-readings with his theodolite, carefully recording them and then correcting the record the next day. Despite his efforts and the group’s successes, he thought he was only a passable navigator.

在沙漠中，他还被给予了地图。有些地图几乎是空白的，上面散布着“疑似骆驼线索”的点状线。他使用了由LRDG创始人拉尔夫·巴格诺德发明的日光指南针，这种指南针可以显示太阳影子与指南针方位的关系，但需要不断调整。无论如何，如果情况允许，他们不会在白天旅行。这意味着他要半夜起来寻找合适的星星，用经纬仪进行星象测量，仔细记录，然后第二天再校正记录。尽管他付出了努力，小组也取得了成功，但他认为自己只是一个及格的导航员。

He had been lured from the LRDG to the SAS (which now had its own Jeeps) by the thought of “operations”. In practice he kept back. When the SAS raided the Wadi Tamet air base in Libya, killing 30 German and Italian pilots in their mess and destroying 24 parked planes, he was waiting on the perimeter. He had got the chaps there, across 400 miles of desert; now he had to get them out. A year later he guided a convoy of 18 Jeeps 70 miles across the Tunisian desert, navigating solely by the stars, to the base at Sidi Haneish. There they let rip, roaring en masse down the tarmac, firing their Vickers guns at the maximum rate and setting 37 aircraft ablaze. He counted the tally as his too, but again, necessarily, he was not in the thick of things.

他被“行动”的想法从LRDG吸引到了拥有自己吉普车的SAS。实际上，他始终留在后方。当SAS突袭利比亚的武莱泰美特空军基地，杀死了30名德国和意大利飞行员，并摧毁了24架停放的飞机时，他在外围等待。他已经带领他们穿越了400英里的沙漠到达那里；现在他必须要将他们带出来。一年后，他引导一队18辆吉普车穿越70英里的突尼斯沙漠，仅凭星象导航，到达了锡迪哈奈什基地。在那里，他们疯狂地冲向停机坪，全力射击维克斯机枪，点燃了37架飞机。他也将这些战绩算在自己头上，但他又一次不得不置身事外。

In truth he was not gung-ho, despite his blond daredevil appearance. (He wore no headdress, letting the wind and sand blow through him.) In daytime dead-reckoning navigation he refused to go by hunches, but carefully plotted out velocity over distance to measure the convoy’s progress towards its target. When it came to fighting he had no wish to kill anyone, only to outwit them. A few of the chaps, including some he greatly admired, were a bit too fond of shooting off at things. But he still relished the occasional adrenalin rush of firing his Jeep’s guns into the dark. And in a later job, escorting SAS paratroopers to their planes, he liked to hitch a ride himself, in the bomb-aimer’s seat.

事实上，尽管他金发魔鬼般的外表，他并不好战。（他没有戴任何头巾，让风沙穿过他。）在白天的推算航行中，他拒绝凭直觉行事，而是仔细计算速度和距离以测算车队向目标的进展。当涉及到战斗时，他没有杀死任何人的愿望，只希望智胜他们。有几个小伙子，包括他非常敬佩的一些人，对射击有点过于热衷了。但他仍然享受偶尔的肾上腺素激增，这时他会在黑暗中射击吉普车上的枪。后来在为SAS伞兵护送到飞机的工作中，他喜欢自己也搭个便车，在投弹手的座位上。

What pleased him greatly about the SAS was its informal structure. It was not like the regular army, with all that pointless marching up and down. He liked to keep his army uniform reasonably smart, but high-polished militarism repelled him. It reminded him of the young land-workers he had seen as a teenage tourist in Nazi Germany, marching with their spades like rifles over their shoulders. He never sought promotion, either, preferring to stay with his friends. When he was made a sergeant in 1941, and fell out marginally with an officer who insisted that his men slept in their boots (quite impractical in sleeping bags), he reduced himself to the ranks rather than apologise. In the SAS, a good lot of chaps who got on well together, he felt much more at home.

SAS让他十分满意的是它非正式的结构。它不像常规军队，军队里无意义的来回行进令他厌烦。他喜欢保持军装的整洁，但那种过分的军国主义让他反感。它让他想起了他少年时期作为游客在纳粹德国看到的年轻农场工人，他们用铁锹肩扛如步枪般行进。他也从不追求晋升，更愿意与朋友们待在一起。1941年，当他被提升为中士，并因为一位坚持让士兵们穿着靴子睡觉的军官（在睡袋里非常不切实际）而微微不和时，他宁愿自陵军衔也不愿意道歉。在SAS，一群相处融洽的好伙计让他感觉更像在家。

The desert commanded his love. It also greatly challenged him. On beautiful smooth patches, the Jeeps could reach 60mph; elsewhere they lurched through sharp stones that simply tore the tyres. Fleeing Tamet, he tried to mend a puncture by stuffing in blankets; rather maddeningly, the wheel disintegrated all the same. Later on that escape, with almost no water left in the other Jeep, everyone peed into the radiator to assist. At the very end, a few Stukas tried a bit of a strafe. Dust boiled up, but they got away.

沙漠赢得了他的爱。同样，它也对他提出了巨大的挑战。在平坦光滑的地方，吉普车能够达到每小时60英里的速度；在其他地方，它们走过尖锐的石头，胎都被划破了。在逃离塔米特的过程中，他尝试用毯子塞住轮胎的钉孔；令人几乎发狂的是，车轮仍旧彻底散架了。在那次逃跑中的后期，另一辆吉普车几乎没有水了，大家都往散热器里尿尿以求帮助。最后，几架斯图卡轰炸机试图进行扫射。尘土飞扬，但他们还是逃脱了。

The enemy often missed them, to the point where he and his comrades often felt they faced no risk at all. That was due less to him, he thought, than to the terrifically secret nature of the SAS, which suited him. After sabotage work in France, the rest of his career was in intelligence work of some sort or another, mostly for MI6. All he would reveal about it was that it involved a lot of sailing. The SAS, of which he was the last surviving "Original", had taught him well.

敌人经常错过他们，以至于他和他的同志们常常感觉他们面临的风险几乎为零。他认为，这不仅仅是因为他自己，还因为SAS那种极度保密的特性，这非常适合他。在法国的破坏工作之后，他的其他职业生涯主要在情报工作方面，大部分为MI6服务。他所愿意透露的，就是这些工作涉及大量的航海。SAS教会了他许多，而他是最后一位在世的“原始成员”。

In very old age his sky-blue eyes were blind. But endless deserts of sand or sea lay behind them, mapped by the stars.

在他晚年时，那双天蓝色的眼睛已经失明。但在它们的背后，是由星星勾画出来的无尽的沙漠和大海。