El Alamein

by Jack Murray

8

  Between Antelat and Msus, Libya: 24th January 1942

  Danny and the remaining member of the party drove through the rest of the night and arrived back at the camp just before first light. There were no guards on picket duty. All was silent. Something was most definitely wrong. Danny glanced at the others. Everyone seemed on edge.

  ‘What on earth’s going on here?’ asked Lieutenant Blair. There was just a hint of hysteria in his voice. He was close to cracking.

  They drew to a halt. Sergeant Gray leapt out of the front and began checking the camp for signs of life. The trucks in the camp were empty. The others slowly climbed out of the back, joining Gray in the search for the soldiers who’d stayed behind. Danny, meanwhile, tried to reach them via the wireless set. There was no response. Gray reported back to Blair after a few minutes.

  ‘No one, sir. They’ve all gone. A number of vehicles are still here but one of the trucks and one of the guns is missing.’

  ‘What do you think has happened?’ asked Blair, trying to keep the edge of fear out of his voice.

  ‘Hard to say, sir. We avoided radio contact for fear that the Germans would intercept. Perhaps they came under attack again from the air and had to take evasive…’

  ‘Look over here,’ said Buller, thirty yards away.

  The others went over to join him. Buller was standing near a number of mounds. Guns were stuck in the ground and helmets draped over the top of them. There were around a dozen mounds in total. One of the mounds had a beret draped over it. Blair went over and lifted the black beret up.

  ‘Jepson,’ said Blair. He turned to Gray. ‘There can’t have been more than half a dozen others. They’ve been taken prisoner.’

  Gray nodded on agreement. It made sense. Why else would they have buried the bodies? There was just a hint of light now and they could see better the signs of explosions pitting the landscape either side of the camp. There was no question they’d come under attack from either guns or tanks. Any survivors would have been taken as prisoners of war.

  Blair sat down and stared at the ground. It seemed like a good idea in the circumstances. The others joined him.

  ‘I think it unlikely Jerry will come back,’ said Blair after a few minutes. We’ll rest here for today.’ He fell into a sombre silence.

  Gray took charge. He looked at the group and said ‘See if there’s any petrol we can siphon from the two trucks. We’ll need everything we can lay our hands on. And check if there’s any ammo or food, water left. Anything.’ There was no hiding the resignation in his voice. Or was it tiredness? They’d all gone without sleep. He looked at Blair and added, ‘But first we should get an hour or two sleep,’ suggested Gray. ‘Then when we’re rested, we can find everything we need.’

  Blair nodded mutely. Danny glanced at Blair and saw a man who was utterly crushed. Without hope. Whether this was in memory of his fallen comrades or something else, he didn’t know. Danny felt sad for the men that had fallen but he felt something else, too. Elation. He’d survived a situation in which he was convinced he would die. The euphoria had lasted as long as the journey back to the camp. When he finally bedded down for the night, however, he fell immediately into a dreamless sleep.

  -

  Danny woke up with a start. An engine was coughing to life nearby. Bright light blinded him although he was lying in shadow. His eyes focused on his watch. It was just after two in the afternoon. He’d been asleep for eight hours. He rolled away from the truck and staggered to his feet.

  ‘Tea?’ shouted Fitz.

  ‘Yes, thanks,’ said Danny.

  ‘Go and bloody make one then,’ added Buller. The old one-two. Danny groaned as Buller and Fitz laughed at him. He went over and sat near them. Danny nodded towards the lone figure standing at the edge of the camp. They all looked in the direction of Blair.

  ‘What do you think, Danny boy?’

  ‘I can’t think without tea and something to eat. But, if pressed, I’d say we were fairly buggered.’

  ‘That would be my assessment too,’ agreed Fitz. ‘Buggered with plums on top.’

  This stopped Buller mid sup of his tea. He looked at Fitz. The Irishman merely shrugged.

  ‘What does Gray think?’ asked Danny.

  ‘Ask him yourself,’ replied Buller. This was a standing joke about the notoriously tight-lipped sergeant. ‘While you’re at it, you should thank him.’

  Danny turned and looked questioningly at the Liverpudlian.

  ‘Blair was all for leaving you to Jerry. Gray somehow got him to make that last attack.’

  ‘Bloody hell,’ replied Danny.

  That was the consensus on their mood. Danny made a brew for himself and the others. They sat drinking it in silence wondering what they were going to do now. As far as Danny could see, their options were limited. With limited fuel, food and water there was only so far they could travel and so long they could live without any fresh supply.

  The next few hours were spent draining water and fuel from the engines of the vehicles that had been disabled by bullets and bombs. There was no ammo left. The Germans had seen to that. They had one truck and a two-pound gun and enough fuel for a day’s travel at most. With careful nursing they could make the water and food last a little longer. But there wasn’t much left. Hunger would be as much a companion to them as the man next to them. They needed to return to their base. But where was their base now?

  Blair strolled over towards Danny and the others. He called Gray and Evans over, too. Both were taking spare parts from one of the other trucks. Everyone sat down and looked without any great sense of expectation towards Blair. His authority had been on the wane for a couple of weeks now. Sergeant Gray was their leader in all but name. Throughout their time in the harassing the Axis troops, his manner had never changed. He remained coolly professional throughout the close calls they’d experienced. If what Buller said was true, he’d effectively overruled Blair and insisted they return to rescue Danny. For Buller that had almost been the final straw in his view of the lieutenant.

  ‘We’re in a pretty rum situation, boys. There’s no use in hiding it,’ began Blair. His manner remained despondent, and it was having an effect on the others.

  ‘Our choices are limited. None of them good. All, in their own way, wrong. For this reason, I think we forget for a moment chain of command and discuss, as men, what we do next. I want you to feel free to express an opinion. Everyone’s opinion is valid. Who’s first?’

  Danny nodded and all eyes turned to him.

  ‘We should drive towards Saunnu. We should have enough fuel to take us there. It’s a risk we’ll run into Jerry and we’ll have to take our chances. If we’re smart and travel by night perhaps we can either find a way of getting through, finding fuel and supplies, or maybe we’ll even run into some of our boys, who knows?’

  ‘Anyone else?’ asked Blair.

  ‘I’m with Danny,’ said Buller. Fitz and Evans both nodded in agreement.

  All eyes turned to Gray. The sergeant fixed his eyes on Danny. For a moment he was silent, then he spoke in his usual measured way.

  ‘Heading towards Saunnu is suicide. It will be crawling with Germans, if the last radio contact we had was any guide.’ Danny’s heart sank and his face reddened. He should have stayed silent. The folly of youth. ‘Unfortunately, Shaw is right,’ continued Gray. ‘The Germans are to our south. The desert is to our east and west. There may be a chance of running into our boys if we head north west. We have no other choice, sir.’

  Danny tried to hide his delight at being proven right. The words of Gray, not just the words, his manner of speaking made any alternative inconceivable.

  ‘Saunnu, it is then,’ said Blair. ‘I hope to God we’re right.’

  ‘One other thing, sir,’ added Gray. ‘We’ve lost a lot of good men and I think when we’ve finished our work here, and before we leave, we should spend a few minutes commemorating them.’

  There were nods from the others. They hadn’t spent
any time thinking about those who’d fallen. It was the least they could do.

  -

  ‘Anything on the radio,’ asked Blair for what seemed like the twentieth time. Buller turned sharply towards the lieutenant and seemed on the point of telling him to shut up when Fitz nudged him. Buller nodded sullenly.

  ‘Nothing, sir,’ replied Danny. They’d been driving for three hours and darkness shrouded the road ahead. Blair touched the arm of Sergeant Gray and the truck slowed to a halt.

  Blair looked around and then fixed his gaze on a point off the road. He turned to the others in the back of the truck.

  ‘I think we’ll stop here for the night. Pull off the road and we’ll camp fifty yards over there. Evans, Shaw can you take a recce. No point in falling into any soft sand.’

  ‘Don’t worry about the mines, Danny-boy,’ chipped in Fitz.

  ‘Thanks for your concern,’ replied Danny, laughing. This obvious danger had occurred to him as it had the others before Fitz gave it a voice.

  Danny and Evans fanned out ten yards apart. In theory, they were unlikely to upset any mines. The intent was to blow up trucks rather than individual soldiers. Each walked slowly forward, testing the ground, lightly, with their feet. Danny found himself holding his breath. He inched forward, eyes staring at the ground in what remained of the light. From the corner of his eye he saw Evans stop suddenly.

  ‘What’s wrong?’ asked Danny urgently.

  ‘I have a stone in my boot,’ came the reply.

  A volley of abuse was hurled in the Welshman’s direction which he dealt with by lying on the ground and laughing.

  Twenty minutes later they had a small fire going. They put sheets up to hide its glow. The land around them was as flat as it was featureless. A fire would be seen from miles away. The risk of attracting the attention of any German patrol was uppermost in their minds.

  They pooled a couple of tins of bully beef and Evans made a stew of sorts. As soon as they could, the fire was extinguished. Some blankets had been rescued from the original trucks, but they were barely enough to keep warm in the freezing cold of night.

  After such a long sleep that day, Danny found it hard to settle and barely slept an hour or two that night. Instead, he listened to the loud snores of Buller and a distant hum.

  Around midnight, still unable to sleep, Danny stood up and went for a walk. Away from the snores of Buller, the hum he’d heard earlier grew louder. He walked a bit further and listened.

  There was no question that there were vehicles out there. The question on Danny’s mind was whose they were. They were too far away to make out anything distinguishing about them. The noise grew louder now. They were closer.

  Ten minutes later, he saw them. The unmistakable outline of a Mark III Panzers. He counted forty of them rumbling past, half a mile away. They seemed so much larger and fearsome than the British Crusaders. He looked at his watch. It was ten after midnight. In all his time in North Africa he could only remember one night march in a tank. Yet he knew the Germans did this as a matter of course. No wonder they were so difficult to defeat. They were relentless. He watched the column recede into the distance and then he returned to the camp. A voice whispered to him.

  ‘Jerry?’

  It was Gray. Danny nodded and then settled back down into his makeshift bed. He fell asleep an hour later.

  -

  The jeep set off early next morning. The news that they had nearly been run over by a convoy of German tanks was greeted with dismay. It increased their sense of vulnerability without providing any reassurance that where they were headed was in British hands.

  ‘What’s that saying?’ asked Evans as the truck bumped along the endless road.

  ‘Between a rock and place?’ suggested Fitz.

  ‘No, not that one. But that’s good.’

  ‘Out of the frying pan?’ continued Fitz.

  ‘No, not that one either.’

  ‘Caught between the devil and the deep blue sea?’ asked Danny

  ‘No,’ replied Evans.

  There was silence for a few moments. Then Fitz found the waiting unbearable.

  ‘And?’

  ‘Oh nothing. I was just trying to remember it,’ said Evans with a wistful smile.

  Fitz stared at Evans and then looked over to Buller.

  ‘Buller.’

  Buller took off his beret and proceeded to beat the Welshman with it. His laughter suggested that the punishment was not quite as painful as Fitz would have liked. They were several miles south of Saunnu when they saw a number of dark shapes in the distance. The consensus was to keep going. From this distance it was impossible to tell if it was friend or foe. If it was the latter, they could certainly get away but their limited supply of fuel was unlikely to keep them safe much longer. With each mile, it became apparent that the shapes in the distance were not moving.

  ‘Perhaps it’s a tank leaguer,’ suggested Buller.

  Danny looked at the way the shapes were arrayed across the horizon. They were tanks. All stationary.

  ‘No. Stop,’ said Danny. ‘They’re all dead.’

  They drove over towards the shapes. Only Danny seemed confident about what they were. The scene that greeted them was horrific. Less than twenty-four hours earlier this had been a battlefield. There were a few dozen tanks littering the desert over a couple of square miles. None of them German or Italian.

  ‘Bloody hell,’ said Buller. Everyone else was silent as they drove past one blackened hulk after another. It was nightmarish. The twisted metal was still smoking. One tank was glowing red in parts. The air was rank with the acrid smell of cordite. Danny felt tears sting his eyes. It was an enormous graveyard for his fellow tank men. He wondered if he knew any of them. Finally, Gray stopped the truck and they all climbed out. Buller lit a cigarette while Blair walked forward twisting his head left and right like a tourist in an art gallery.

  The initial sadness and inertia gave way to something else within Danny. The desire to survive. He went over to Gray.

  ‘Sarge, we should see what we can salvage from the tanks.’

  ‘I agree, Shaw. You, Buller, Fitz and Evans each take an area. Search the tanks and find what you can. Anything that might be useful.’

  ‘Perhaps we can get one of the tanks working again.’

  Gray looked dubious about this but nodded anyway. He watched Danny detail the others and the search of the tanks began. It was only as he approached the first tank that Danny realised just how heart-rending a task this would be. Inside many of the tanks lay what remained of young men just like him. The blackened exterior still had wisps of smoke floating gently upwards. On the other side of the tank were two charred figures that had been caught in an explosion. Danny fought back the urge to be sick.

  He pushed on towards another tank that had been crippled but was not burnt out. The crew had clearly been able to evacuate in time. On the side were jerricans. He lifted one. It was half full of petrol.

  ‘Over here,’ shouted Danny. A minute or two later Gray drove up in the truck and they loaded the jerricans. There was no water or food, however. This set the pattern for the rest of the afternoon. They identified tanks that had been crippled and took what they could from them.

  Lieutenant Blair surveyed their haul as the light began to dim and the sky turned from a blue to a pastel mauve laced with pink-tinged cloud. There was little by way of water or food, but they managed to find sufficient petrol to take them at least as far as Tobruk which was around three hundred miles away.

  ‘Were you able to identify any tanks that might be repaired?’

  Danny shook his head.

  ‘Jerry is usually pretty good at locating and repairing any of our tanks that might still run. Damn sight better than us, if truth be told.’

  Blair nodded but seemed unperturbed by the news.

  ‘Very well. We’ll camp nearby tonight then make a start tomorrow for Tobruk. I suspect we will run into Jerry at some point, but we have two things on o
ur side. The desert is a big place and a division of Germans is pretty hard to hide; we’ll see him before he sees us. Also, we now have enough fuel to get us to where we want to go and, if we can ration sufficiently, enough water, too. I think by the time we hit the coast we’ll be fairly hungry but we’ll be alive.’

  A melancholy peace descended with the sun. Nothing could be done for the men who lay like charred statues in their metal coffins. There was little said as they ate. The sights and the smells they had encountered were too vivid, too raw to countenance the idea of the usual ribaldry that threaded their conversation. They munched solemnly. Each alone in his thoughts. The thought of their sacrifice intensified the ache in Danny’s stomach.

  The thrill of the adventure, begun just over a month ago, had been replaced by a vision of a future they all faced. They could see it in detail: black, arbitrary and indiscriminate. Death was a remorseless hunter and they were the prey. Danny thought of his father that night. He thought of the tortured guilt he’d lived with after seeing the carbonised bodies of men he’d fought with. Alone, under his overcoat, he wept for his father and for the men who’d died in terror and indescribable pain.

  9

  South of Msus, Libya, 25th January 1942

  For two days the Regiment 8 tanks of the 15th Panzer division travelled over flatter land; then it grew hillier. The British were like a boxer facing a heavier opponent. They would trade punches then retreat. Stop, fight, retreat. It was so different from just a month ago. Then the Afrika Korps had been worn down by the relentlessness of the attacks. Now they were the ones who had the tail wind. It had all happened so quickly. The ground they’d fought for, died over and lost during December had been recovered in a matter of days. Manfred could barely believe how fortunes could change so quickly in war. He wanted to ask Kummel why the initiative had shifted so dramatically in favour of the Afrika Korps. He didn’t, however. The desire not to seem naïve outweighed his desire to learn.

  None of the other men in the tank questioned the situation. They seemed happy that they were the ones dishing out punishment rather than being on the end of a beating. So they pushed on. A feeling nestled in Manfred that was somewhere between rejoicing at the reversal they’d engineered and fear, too. This slight tremor in his otherwise good mood was rooted in the suspicion that even Kummel did not know why they were making such rapid progress through Libya again. One could speculate, of course. No one did. They were winning. What else was there to know?