(The Chevs. were taking explosives to plant under the BARCE-BENGHAZI railway.)
“The road BARCE-BENGHAZI was reached after 14 miles at 22.45 hrs. and Major Stirling continued in the direction of REGIMA with his party.
“23.5.42 Major Stirling returned to the R.V. at 06.00 hrs. and stated that he wished to move off that evening. The party moved off at 14.30 hrs. and drove all night.”
And so to Siwa.
Now to fill in the gaps.
There were six in Stirling’s party : himself, Maclean, Randolph Churchill, and three others including Seekings and Cooper who had a part in all Stirling’s wildest exploits.
Just before midnight they left the rendezvous and drove northwards to the road which leads down to Regima from El Abiar, and here the trouble began. Stirling’s car was a Ford, a staff car of the type which he always used in the pre-jeep days, with the body cut down to the level of the doors and looking in the distance or the dark rather like a German Volkswagen. Coming across country from Siwa the track rods had been bent on some bump and as a result the front wheels were not truly parallel. In the desert this did not matter much but once on the smooth tarmac the tyres, askew, produced a high-pitched scream. There was no time to do anything about it so, screaming, they drove on towards Benghazi.
Near Benina was the road-block, a fairly old friend by this time. Stirling slowed at the bar as the sentry came forward into the glare of the headlights and inside the car, below the level of the body, the safety catches on five Tommy-guns slid back. Not to be used here, of course, but just in case … if the sentry did something tiresome.
However, the sentry was a good Italian, and when Maclean, the linguist of the party, answered “Staff officers” to his challenge he raised the bar and let them through.
With the tyres still squeaking Stirling drove on. By making a circle round Benghazi and coming in along the Tocra road from the north he could avoid much of the town and arrive more easily at the harbour for he was after ships this time, not aircraft, his usual game.
On the causeway outside the Derna Gate a car met them and passed by, then stopped, turned hurriedly and came back. This looked bad; the sentry at Benina must have suspected something after all and done some rapid telephoning. So squeaking louder than ever and with the car behind seemingly in pursuit Stirling drove headlong into the town. Gaining a little on the pursuers, he turned quickly into a side alley and stopped; the car behind dashed past and on down the main road.
In the alleyway the car’s crew waited anxiously but all was quiet; it seemed as if they had dodged their pursuers successfully. Then all over the city the air raid sirens started to wail. There was no sound of aircraft and no bombs falling; moreover it had been arranged with Middle East that Benghazi should not be raided that night, and they assumed that this must indicate some special form of alarm against British ground forces. If this were so all the roads would be held and the best thing to do seemed to be to put a time bomb in the car and try to get away on foot. They could hardly hope, if the hunt was up, in the same squeaking car to drive out of the town and through the road-blocks. So they started to walk out, creeping along the dark and narrow streets.
Before long an Italian policeman appeared who gave Maclean his opinion that the air raid was a false alarm and said that he, at any rate, was going home to bed. By now the sirens had stopped and all was quiet : it seemed that they might make an attempt on the harbour after all. In a few moments they were back at the abandoned Ford again, wondering if the half-hour time-pencil would last out another five minutes, for these fuses tend to be temperamental and disregard the smaller divisions of time. Someone groped in the back of the car, pulled out the pencil and detonator and threw them round the corner. The town was still quiet so they started to get on with the job.
Stirling had brought with him from Cairo two collapsible rubber boats and a supply of heavy explosive charges for use against enemy shipping in the harbour. He hoped to get down to the water’s edge, inflate the boats and paddle out to the ships. A steamer or two sunk alongside the moles, or better still in the fairway, would cause the enemy a lot of trouble.
Stirling, Maclean and Cooper started off for the waterside carrying a boat and the charges. A barbed wire fence surrounded the harbour but they found a convenient hole and scrambled through. Inside a sentry challenged. “Militari,” Maclean answered, and asked him the way to the hotel, for the “luggage” they were carrying needed some explanation. The sentry knew of no hotel; the British bombing had wrecked those which existed formerly so Maclean thanked him and passed on.
Down at the water’s edge they began to pump up the boat but that night they seemed to be dogged by squeaks and the pump screeched with each stroke. From a ship moored not far out a sentry challenged. “Militari,” shouted Maclean, and continued pumping. Again the guard on the ship challenged. By this time Maclean was beginning to get rather tired of Italian sentries. “Will you stop challenging me?” he called. “I’ve already told you twice who I am,” and went on with the pump.
But the rubber boat refused to be inflated. On the long journey across the desert from Siwa it had been rubbed against the car and punctured so Maclean went back to the car for the other boat. With this he started back to the harbour but to save time and a scramble through the wire entered at the main gate. Here were five or six sentries who gave no trouble, but down by the waterside there appeared another who was more inquisitive and would not leave them in peace.
By now Maclean’s patience with Italian sentries was exhausted. He returned to the main gate and demanded to see the N.C.O. in charge of the guard. From a dimly-lit shack came a sleepy Italian corporal, pulling on his trousers. Maclean turned on him sharply.
“This,” he said, “is simply disgraceful. Half a dozen times you have let us through this gate, carrying all this stuff. It might be bombs. How do you know we are not British? You should have asked for our identity papers.”
The corporal was anxious and apologetic. He would certainly reprimand the sentries who were no doubt reluctant to bother such important officers as Maclean and his party.
“Well,” answered Maclean, “don’t let this sort of thing occur again. We are now going to collect our kit from inside the wire and leave.” And did so.
Back at the car where the driver was hammering at the bent track rods it was beginning to get light and it was evident that there was no time to get clear of the town before dawn. So a hiding place for the day had to be found. First they found a garage which looked suitable but the door was too narrow to get the car inside. Nearby was a second garage large enough, and by good luck it had above it a flat which seemed to be deserted. Creeping up the stairs they found it empty and here spent the day, lying for the most of the time on the floor to keep below the level of the blown-in windows. On the opposite side of the road there was much coming and going at a German headquarter office of some sort, and at the back the flat shared a courtyard with an Arab family who could be heard talking on the other side of the partition wall.
Till evening they were undisturbed. Then at dusk were heard footsteps on the stairs, slow and unsteady. They neared the top and the party gathered themselves for a fight. Churchill, with a week’s beard and a week since his last wash; looked out—into the face of a drunken Italian sailor, intent on loot or rape. In a moment the man was at the foot of the steps, running for his life.
After dark Stirling decided to make another attempt on the shipping in the harbour but a blazing oil tanker lit up the foreshore like day, though none of the sentries of whom Maclean enquired seemed to know how it had been set afire. Then there was nothing to do but leave Benghazi, so they drove out by the Berka road, through the road-block at Benina and back to Gurdon waiting on the escarpment.
I write this in Tripoli on May 21st, 1943, with a wish that, I am afraid, is never likely to be realised. It is that one day Mussolini may have this chapter read to him and learn that a year ago to-night the son of England’s Prime Minister sp
ent thirty hours in his Cyrenaican capital.
The orders which L.R.D.G. had received from Eighth Army at that time were rather contradictory. For we were told to keep the road watches going at the Marble Arch and on the Msus-Mechili track and on the North and South Roads in the Gebel, and at the same time “interrupt enemy supplies along the Tripoli-Benghazi road.”
Now a road watch needs peace and quiet. You cannot have a patrol sitting day in, day out, counting traffic if it is going to be disturbed by searching aircraft or ground patrols sent out as the result of a “beat-up” on road transport a few miles away. And although the Tripoli-Benghazi road looks long enough on the map there are only a limited number of areas at which approach—and get-away—from the south is suitable. When their M.T. is shot up at Kilo X to-night, the enemy’s immediate reaction is to send out ground forces and aircraft to comb the country round Kilo X. So we needed some means of attacking traffic without the enemy knowing where the attack had taken place. The problem reduced itself, in fact, to planting unseen bombs in trucks at X which would go off fifty miles away at Y or Z.
The Siwa Brains Trust—every one in Siwa—was turned on to the problem. There were various schools of thought. The Easonsmith school, for instance, would have a man sitting on one side of the road holding a cord the far end of which was tied to the top of a telegraph post on the other. In the middle of the cord, over the road, would be an explosive charge with magnets attached. As the car passed the man would lower the cord and an ingenious quick-release device would drop the charge on to the top of the cab. Here it would stick and go off with a time fuse some miles later, blow the top off the driver’s head and send the lorry into the ditch.
Then there was the cow-catcher school whereby the truck itself picked up from a hole in the road a bomb, with hooks attached, which having tangled itself up in the axles or radius rods exploded later and blew the bottom out of the truck.
In the end the Timpson plan seemed to have the best chance of success. By this the enemy lorry was slowed up at a bogus road-block while a man, leaping from behind in the roadside ditch, ran after it and lobbed a bomb into the back. Even here there were many difficulties as there might be passengers in the back of the truck or the tarpaulin cover might be fastened down.
G1 patrol spent some nights on the road leading into Siwa, throwing bags of sand into passing vehicles, and after much practice the scheme seemed worth a trial.
A special type of bomb was needed, one which would both damage the lorry and if possible kill the driver and at the same time set it afire. After many experiments, in which all the derelict vehicles in and around Siwa were destroyed, an approved bomb was produced. This was packed in an Italian haversack of which a supply had been procured from Salvage. The idea was that if the haversack were noticed in the truck Antonio would merely think that Giuseppe had left his shaving kit behind.
So on May 8th, Timpson left with four 44-gallon drums to make a road block, two poles to place across the drums, a couple of red hurricane lamps and two notices in German which read “Achtung, Strassenbau,” the German equivalent for “Road Up.” A night watchman with a brazier of coke was ruled out as being incompatible with a Libyan summer.
Going north of Jalo and across the Marada-’Aghcila road, Timpson was fifty miles west of the Marble Arch on May 14th, far enough away, we hoped, from the patrol at the road watch.
A large heap of road metal seemed to be an obvious excuse for a road-block and here the empty drums were placed, the notices set up and the metal shovelled across the road to narrow down the gap.
But things did not turn out according to plan. The first cars to arrive, apparently suspicious, hurried past the drums. So the gap was made narrower but still they had no luck. With only one car approaching the bomb thrower would crouch behind the barrel, but when there were two the lights of the second showed him up as he dodged the first. So the throwers retired to the ditch but then found it difficult to catch up the truck.
By 2 a.m. Timpson realised that this plan would not work. So he decided to try a new one of chasing the enemy vehicles in his own truck with Fraser sitting on the bonnet, bomb in hand, ready to throw it into the overtaken lorry.
The first chase ended at his own road block where he found two gesticulating Italians with a broken down lorry and another on tow. To take the Italians prisoner or destroy the lorry would give the game away so Timpson assumed the character of a German officer, explained that he was in a great hurry, and promised to send out help from Sirte, driving off among cries of “Grazie, Kamarade.”
He had no more luck that night and a burst tyre on the main road at dawn put an end to operations.
So Timpson abandoned bomb throwing and retired sixty miles south into the hills to consider matters. On the way he had a fight with some ground troops in which Guardsman Matthews was killed.
A few days later he attacked a Road House4 near Sultan.
“At 7 p.m. we set off for the road. The going was bad, particularly the last four miles, and we did not reach it till 10.00. We swarmed up a telegraph pole and cut the wires, and laid some mines in the road. Driving on with the headlights on we came to the Road House and passing by slowly opened up on men and vehicles. The blaze of fire was tremendous, the first three trucks firing with one Breda 12.7.(tracer, incendiary, A.P. and H.E.), 2 Vickers .303, 3 Vickers “K,” 1 twin Browning, 1 single Browning and a Lewis. In fact there was too much fire for the rear trucks were blinded by the light of those ahead and the multi-coloured ricochet of the tracer. Six large trucks were parked by the roadside and into these we poured ammunition. We halted after half a mile and cut the telephone wires again. As we drove back to the rendezvous we heard a tremendous explosion, evidently a vehicle going over the mines.”
The delayed-bomb plan seemed to be a failure so we reverted to the old, straightforward “beat-up” and Wilder took both T patrols to attack the Agedabia-Benghazi road. This was an old hunting ground where the patrols had shot up traffic during the autumn offensive, difficult country to operate in because the plain across which the road runs is as flat as a pancake and the nearest cover is in the low escarpment twenty miles to the east.
At dusk Wilder left the shelter of the scarp and, crawling slowly across the flat ploughland, was on the road by midnight. Near Magrun, at a road block, the sentry shouted to him to stop but Wilder, preferring to fight on ground of his own choosing, drove through the zigzag while the guard did nothing to stop him. A few miles farther south he saw he was being followed by enemy trucks. Drawing off the road, with lights out, he waited till two cars carrying troops drew level. For months past, from abandoned British vehicles, crashed aircraft and elsewhere, the patrols had been collecting extra weapons, Vickers K’s and Brownings, and their fire power was immense, ideal for an occasion like this. A long burst from all the guns killed or wounded twenty of the enemy and set the vehicles ablaze. A short way down the road was a car park from which the drivers had fled in terror, and here, with bombs and incendiaries, all the trucks were destroyed.
For two days Wilder lay up in cover in the escarpment and on the second evening, on the way back to the road, encountered an armed patrol which was probably searching for him. In the fight which followed the New Zealanders killed two Italians and brought the remaining five back as prisoners to Siwa.
In relation to the efforts which L.R.D.G. expended in men, vehicles, petrol, ammunition and food, the direct losses inflicted on the enemy in these raids may seem small. But we knew from prisoners and from captured documents that in addition to the casualties—and these were at least five to one in our favour—the nuisance value was very great. The scale of the attacks, here to-day and fifty miles away to-morrow, made mostly at night when accurate observation was impossible, was greatly exaggerated, especially by the fearful Italians. At times all traffic after dark was stopped. Transport drivers, many of them from semicivilian contractors, were terrified, not knowing when their turn would come. Troops, armoured cars and aircraft had to be
diverted from their proper use to convoy protection work. Thus the enemy, in an Intelligence summary of April, 1942, wrote :
“The L.R.D.G. plays an extremely important part in the enemy sabotage organisation. The selection and training of the men, the strength, speed and camouflage of the vehicles for the country in which they have to operate have enabled the Group to carry out very effective work, particularly in the destruction of Axis aircraft on the landing grounds at Agedabia and Tamet.”
Early in June, Gurdon took Stirling and Mayne to Benghazi again. On the way up the parashots’ one car had been blown up on a thermos bomb on the Tariq el ’Abd and so from the usual rendezvous on the top of the escarpment they went forward to Benghazi in a borrowed G patrol truck.
On the night of the 12th Stirling got into the hangars at Benina airfield. It was dark and the guards were unsuspecting and the small party crept from hangar to hangar with their load of bombs. By the time they had finished they had placed time bombs on five machines and on fourteen crates containing aircraft engines. The three hangars were burnt out when the bombs went off later.
In the last hangar which they dealt with a crack of light was showing from under a door in the side wall. Quietly they crept up to it and Stirling, with a Mills grenade in one hand, gently opened the door. It was the guard room, a small place with bunks in tiers round the walls and the men off duty asleep in them. At a table in the middle of the room sat an officer, reading. As the door opened he glanced up from his book, expecting one of his men with a report. Stirling lobbed the grenade gently across the floor and slammed the door shut. Cooper was behind him, looking over his shoulder : afterwards he told me that it was a long time before he began to forget the expression on the German officer’s face.
While Stirling was at Benina Mayne had gone to the airfield at Berka. But here all went wrong. At Middle East someone had made a muddle, had forgotten, or not been told, that the parashots would be at Berka that night, and had laid on a raid by the R.A.F. So when Mayne got to the edge of the landing ground he found that the bombing and parachute flares made his task impossible. In the end he destroyed one aircraft but his party were seen as they moved off and all the next day troops searched the plain east of Berka across which they were trying to make their way to the rendezvous with Gurdon above the escarpment.
Long Range Desert Group Page 17
