El Alamein

by Jack Murray

  The men responded in a single movement. As they did this, two officers appeared to inspect the new arrivals. The sergeant saluted them dramatically. The first officer returned the salute and then ordered the new arrivals to stand at ease.

  Danny estimated him to be in his mid-thirties. Yet he was already a Lieutenant-Colonel. His clean-shaven face was certainly younger looking than many of the senior officers he’d encountered. In this regard, he looked more like a captain. He walked up the line not so much to inspect the new arrivals as to allow them to inspect him.

  ‘Stand at, ease,’ screamed the sergeant.

  ‘Thank you, sergeant,’ said the Lieutenant-Colonel wearily. ‘Stand easy, men. My name is Roberts. Welcome to your new regiment. You’ve come to replace men we’ve lost. Some of you are new to this war. Some of you will have already seen action; seen men die. Over the next few weeks, you will train like you’ve never trained before. You will hate me, the sergeant and every senior officer on this regiment. But you will be ready to face the enemy. You’ll sweat blood, believe me, but it may just keep you and your comrade’s alive.’

  Roberts finished on this note and then began an inspection of the men before him. He stopped every few soldiers and said a few words to the man before him. Coming before Danny, he asked, ‘Where are you from?’

  ‘Sixth Royal Tank Regiment, sir.’

  Roberts nodded. There was a sadness behind his eyes. An understanding that both recognised. The moment passed then he replied, ‘Well, you’re in the 3 RTR now.’

  -

  As they would not be assigned their tanks and responsibilities until the next day, Danny had some free time on his hands. He started his search. Spotting a few mechanics working on a truck, he went over to chat. They sent him to a sergeant standing over by a Crusader tank. The sergeant pointed him towards the other end of a long line of tanks.

  Walking along the rows of tanks gave him an opportunity to spy the Grant up close. The new gun was certainly impressive, albeit strange. It was not actually part of the turret. Instead, the usual thirty-seven millimetre gun occupied this position. The bigger gun was lower down to the side. Danny wasn’t quite sure what the designers were thinking. The position of the big gun was limited its ability to traverse right or left. It would require the tank to change direction in order to line up on target to the side. Mid battle, this was not ideal as it would not only give Jerry a bigger target to aim at but also one with far less protection than the front plating usually offered. Danny had immediate misgivings about what he was looking at.

  He walked along the line looking at groups of men sitting huddled around small campfires. It was getting colder and night would soon draw in. He hurried his step, fearful of missing his quarry.

  He heard the laugh before he saw the man. His back was to Danny, sitting with two other men drinking tea. Danny walked with a stealthy step and leaned over the man’s shoulder and stole his tea.

  ‘Oi, what the bloody hell,’ exclaimed the soldier.

  ‘Hello Arthur,’ grinned Danny before necking the rest of the tea. ‘Nice cup of tea, that.’

  ‘Danny,’ yelled Arthur leaping to his feet. ‘What the bloody hell are you doing here? I thought you were off swanning around the desert like Lawrence of Arabia or something.’

  ‘Been a right old holiday,’ laughed Danny.

  The two friends sat down and Arthur introduced Danny to the other members of the tank crew. Don Mitchell was the gunner. He was not much younger than Arthur. He was also a Glaswegian. When he spoke, Arthur erupted into laughter at the look on his friend’s face.

  ‘Don’t worry, Danny-boy, none of us understand him.’

  Jim Compton was closer to Danny in age and a Londoner.

  ‘No relation,’ said Compton by way of introduction.

  ‘Danny doesn’t know anything about cricket,’ said Arthur. ‘A complete heathen if you ask me. I don’t know why I let him hang around me.’

  Another round of tea was served. It was getting dark just as the evening calm was broken by the sound of gunfire. Danny was startled but the others took no notice. Arthur smiled grimly at his friend.

  ‘They’re shooting the dogs,’ he explained.

  ‘Tomorrow’s dinner?’ asked Danny.

  ‘Rabies.’

  12

  Tmimi, 30km east of Derna, Libya: 27th February 1942

  Manfred sank to the ground. His sweat stained shirt stuck to him like wet flannel and he desperately wanted to weep. It was his fault. All his fault. He knew it. Around him voices were shouting at him. Angry voices. He couldn’t blame them. One person laughed. It was Gerhardt. He waggled Manfred’s hair as he jogged past.

  ‘Never mind, old friend. It’s only a game.’

  Only a game?

  The match between the 1st and 2nd Battalions was more than that. It was the very stuff of life and death. Manfred’s mistake would not only rankle with him it would provide endless opportunity for both his friend and half the battalion to mock him over the coming weeks. Months probably. The ignominy of it all was beyond words and could only be understood through feeling. And that feeling was pain.

  Manfred rose slowly to his feet. They were now three goals to one down with barely a handful of minutes left to play. The match restarted. Gerhardt jogged forward. He grinned once more at Manfred.

  ‘One more goal and I have a hat trick. Can you gift me another pass?’

  Manfred’s reply was drowned out by the shouts of encouragement from the side lines. Or was it abuse? It was good-natured, ribald and insightful in equal measure. His team were mounting an attack but, as ever, they failed to penetrate a defence every bit as stout in football as they were inside twenty tonnes of armour.

  The 2nd Battalion had the ball now and passed it around like professionals. Some of them had played semi-professionally. They knew what they were about. There was no panic. Just control mixed with awareness as they picked out passes to their team. By comparison, the 1st Battalion could offer only enthusiasm, limitless energy and, in Manfred’s case, suicidally risky play. That he had the ability to carry this off ninety-nine percent of the time was immaterial. Gerhardt had only needed Manfred to lapse once and he punished him severely.

  The 2nd Battalion were on the attack. Manfred back pedalled to his position at the centre of the defence. The ball came across into his box. He didn’t make the same mistake this time. He headed it away, just managing to outjump his friend.

  ‘Bastard,’ exclaimed a grinning Gerhardt, frustrated at missing out on his hat trick.

  The ball moved forward again but not for long. Soon Manfred was racing out to the wing to tackle the tricky winger who’d twisted the spirit of his team inside and out. Another corner to the 2nd Battalion. Manfred had a feeling he knew how the Tommies felt at Tobruk. It felt like he’d spent most of the match under siege. The ball whizzed over and was met powerfully by the head of Gerhardt. Manfred stretched a leg out and hooked it away from the line. The groan from Gerhardt offered him a degree of satisfaction.

  The 1st Battalion chased the ball up the pitch as the whistle blew for first time. Cheers and boos rang out around the makeshift pitch. Gerhardt came over and shook hands with Manfred. The grin was smug and the words were cruelly designed to offer the least amount of comfort possible.

  Manfred’s teammates were good sorts. To a man they came over and consoled him. First over was Lieutenant Stiefelmayer.

  ‘Brehme, that was unlucky. You played well.’

  ‘Thanks, sir,’ replied Manfred gloomily. Stiefelmayer patted him on the back and stood back as his other teammates joined him.

  In their actions was the painful acknowledgement that they had been beaten by a better side and that without Manfred the score could have been considerably worse.

  Inevitably, sympathy was always going to be in short supply from his friend, and rival from yesteryear on a football pitch.

  ‘Hard luck. You played really well,’ said Gerhardt. The sentiment was somewhat undermined by
a delighted grin that seemed to stretch all the way to Tripoli. The laughter that followed these words further bellied any hint of magnanimity. Gerhardt’s sympathy was rewarded by Manfred throwing him to the ground. He stayed there. Laughing. A few of the other opposition were a little bit more understanding to Manfred’s plight. In truth, he’d played a great game. One mistake can often eradicate memories of the honest effort expended, however.

  Manfred helped the still helpless Gerhardt to his feet. His laughter stopped suddenly. The two boys paused for a moment and looked overhead. There was a lone airplane. It took a moment or two to register that it was one of theirs.

  ‘I wonder what’s wrong?’ said Manfred.

  By now most of the players and spectators were looking up at the sky. The plane began its descent. Landing gear and flaps became extended. After a few minutes, engine turning over more slowly, the plane landed on the pitch, much to the amusement of all the onlookers who began to flock towards it.

  A familiar figure emerged from the cockpit. A smile erupted over the sweat-stained face of Hans-Joachim Marseille. His newly awarded Iron Cross glinted in the early afternoon sunlight. However, there was no mistaking how haggard he looked. It was clear he’d had a busy day. The bullet holes in his fuselage confirmed this.

  He was helped down from the plane and all but carried to a hospital tent. This was the first time that either Manfred or Gerhardt had seen the famous air ace up close. Both felt a stab of guilt. While they had been enjoying the football, many of the Luftwaffe were flying sorties and patrolling the skies against the ongoing aggression from the RAF.

  ‘He looks done in,’ commented Gerhardt.

  ‘What’s he saying?’ asked Manfred as there was too much hubbub to hear what was being said.

  Finally the word came back. Two more kills. Cheers went up all around the flyer. When they subsided, both Manfred and Gerhardt heard him ask, ‘Who won the match?’

  -

  The first hint of spring was in the air and flowering on the ground. There were wisps of colour in the unremitting sand and rock. In early March and April the desert was almost bearable. Since the end of February, life had transformed itself. No more marches. Better still, there was no more fighting. They were to stay in one place for the foreseeable future. The repairs taking place now were for more than just armour and machinery. The Afrika Korps was, at last, having a long overdue rest. The enemy, apparently, were mostly of a like mind. Only the RAF seemed intent on poking the wasp’s nest.

  There was renewed energy in everyone. The camp at Tmimi was humming with new arrivals, both men and machines. Manfred was now one of the more experienced crewmen in the regiment. He had a new tank commanded by an old face. Lieutenant Basler had, as usual, been handed a few rookies. In return he’d requested an experienced crew member. He wanted Manfred. Kummel, reluctantly, released Manfred to join the lieutenant.

  Moving from the captain’s tank proved not to be a step down. He was to become a gunner. Manfred’s experience of two battles was always likely to be too important to waste as a loader. In tank terms, the move to be a gunner was a promotion if not in rank then in profile. It was recognition that he had performed well in the past few months and could be trusted with more advanced responsibilities. Unfortunately, it meant that he would be leaving Hans Kummel’s tank. This was a pity as he not only liked the captain he’d learned a great deal from him. More importantly, he viewed Kummel as lucky. This was something all of the soldiers understood but rarely spoke of.

  Aside from Basler, his new crew consisted of one veteran driver, Klaus Jentz, and two newly arrived men, Thomas Keil, who would operate the wireless, and Gerd Kleff who would be Manfred’s loader. Both were from Bavaria but could not have been more different from Manfred’s old crew mate, Andreas Fischer. Manfred looked at them both on his first day in the new tank and wondered how he must have seemed to Overath and Kastner, the senior men in his first tank. Back then he’d tried to hide his nervousness, not through the swagger that Fischer used, successfully he realised, but through a combination of seriousness and competence.

  The two young men, and they were both younger than Manfred, seemed more like puppies: a combination of eagerness to please and enthusiasm. They used this to mask the fear they were feeling. Manfred felt some sympathy for their plight yet was happy to leave them to it. He couldn’t be their nursemaid. If anything, this would be counter-productive. This was the army. They were in a war. They would have to figure it out for themselves. Only three things were needed from the two boys. A willingness to learn; a willingness to obey and, unspoken, a willingness to march towards death.

  There was also a return. Manfred awoke one morning courtesy of a cup of cold water poured liberally over his head. Just as he was about to lay into the culprit he saw who it was. Fischer beamed down at him seemingly none the worse for his wounds.

  ‘You’re back,’ exclaimed Manfred, leaping to his feet. He stopped himself for a moment before adding, ‘Holiday over, then?’

  Fischer grinned and replied, ‘Alas, yes. I don’t know who was sadder. Me or the nurses.’

  Some things clearly hadn’t changed. Fischer’s ego had avoided any long-term damage from his brush with death. If anything, the scar tissue only added another layer of thickness to his skin. What, several months ago, Manfred would have found irritating, he now enjoyed immensely. Adding to this peculiar pleasure was seeing the impact that a fully-recovered and unconstrained Fischer had on some of the new recruits. However, Manfred’s implied promotion had one other benefit that only occurred to him as he chatted with his friend.

  ‘So you’ll be loading then, Andreas?’

  ‘Bugger off,’ replied Fischer.

  ‘I think you’ve a lot of experience you can bring to this position,’ continued Manfred.

  ‘Bugger off.’ Fischer was inspecting the engine of Manfred’s new tank, a Mark IV no less.

  ‘Perhaps one day you’ll be my loader.’

  That was the final straw and moments later Manfred was being chased round the tank by a spanner-wielding Bavarian intent on murder.

  Other changes were less welcome. The news that the regiment commander, Lieutenant-Colonel Cramer was to return to Germany was greeted with universal sadness. Manfred liked the gnarled veteran immensely. Like Kummel, he was a man that believed in leading from the front. He didn’t ask the men to do anything that he was not prepared to do himself. This had nearly resulted in his death the summer before when the Allies had made a major push to relieve Tobruk. Any hopes that Kummel would replace him were dispelled by the news that the new commander would be Lieutenant-Colonel Willi Teege.

  The new commander was an unknown quantity, but the reports were good. Quite a few of the men knew him from Panzer Troop School. Cramer’s leaving speech confirmed what they all knew, however. He turned to Hans Kummel at one point and said, ‘I know that it was you who led our regiment to victory. And I ask that you maintain your attitude and aggressiveness, which I have always admired, even under a new commanding officer.’

  Cramer was given a rousing send-off from the regiment. He wiped a tear away then ducked his head into the car. Soon he would be on a plane back to Germany. Everyone envied him but there was no hint of begrudgery. He’d earned it. Probably they all had.

  As soon as he was gone, life resumed its slow pace. A curious calm had descended on North Africa. The drum and the trumpet of battle lay ahead. For now, the drooping clouds and intermittent showers were giving way to a belligerently blue sky, sun and the first hints of the heat that would burn and blister and brutalise the senses of all who toiled underneath it.

  13

  Ladenburg (nr. Heidelberg): 1st March 1942

  Another day passed in the gradual erosion of Peter Brehme’s police powers. The day began normally enough. Crime in the town was at an all-time low. The Nazis, thought Brehme, had devised the perfect way of reducing crime. Force all likely criminals into the army and give them a war to fight. In the midst of some of the ha
rdest years the country had ever experienced, Peter Brehme had never had it so easy. Nor had he ever been so bored.

  The first inkling that this might be coming to end came when he received a call from the mayor, Stefan Lerner, to meet him at his office. This was a monthly affair normally when Brehme gave his report which, of late, had lasted a few minutes and then they had a few drinks. It was as convivial as it was absurd. Brehme looked forward to these meetings. He rarely socialised.

  There were fewer soldiers in the square now. Even the Hitler Youth were less visible these days. It wasn’t difficult to understand why. The country was fighting across two fronts. The ‘volk’ required every able-bodied man to do his duty. No doubt boys, too.

  He thought about Manfred and felt a stab of pain. His son had been swept along, like all of his generation, by the fantasy propagated by the Nazis. The youth had rebelled against the misery and the discipline of post-war Germany. This was a rebellion not just against the situation but also against another generation. Brehme’s generation. The harsh discipline of their elders had sown seeds reaped by the Nazis. Brehme recalled not only the severity of his own upbringing but also Manfred’s. Had it been effective or had he merely created the raw material that would ultimately be moulded by a man like Hitler? He knew the answer to this question, and it made him sick inside.

  Brehme wondered how much Manfred still believed in the ideals indoctrinated by his surrogate parents in the party. Was it still possible to believe in a Fatherland and Fuhrer as he bore witness to the death and maiming of friends and comrades? If he did then his son was a fool. This thought, as much as any other, pained him. Life was the best teacher a man could have. Perhaps even he could still learn something new. And change.

  Decades of service in the police force meant that Brehme could not stop himself noticing things. He stopped in the town square and looked around. Everything that was there was meant to be there. Something was missing, though, and it irked him. He could see no one from the Hitler Youth. Not one solitary member. When had they stopped being so visible? Perhaps their absence was a sign that the younger generation was waking up to the reality of Nazism: the horrifying prospect of being sent to some foreign field. And dying there.