El Alamein

by Jack Murray

  Teege stood up and pointed to the remaining tanks of the regiment. There weren’t many. He seemed to be relaying orders. Another attack probably. Basler stood up and spied Manfred. He came over to the tank and looked it over.

  ‘The colonel says that there is to be a counter-attack. General von Thoma has ordered that we and the 21st are to attack the northern and southern flanks of the enemy. Manfred gave the briefest nod of his head and turned to Kleff and Kiel who were standing nearby. There was no sign of fear in their eyes, just resignation.

  Manfred returned his gaze to Teege. He was still with Stiefelmayer. It was difficult to think of him as ‘Willi’ at that moment. His manner was too dignified, his sorrow too profound. Manfred felt touched by the tenderness of the feeling he was witnessing. There was no question that Stiefelmayer would not survive the day.

  Within hours, Teege would be dead, too.

  46

  East of the Rahman Track: 2nd November 1942

  ‘Poor buggers,’ said PG solemnly.

  It wasn’t much of a eulogy, but it matched the sombre mood in the tank. Outside amid the smoke lay the charred evidence of the earlier onslaught. Derelict tanks littered the landscaped like piles of coal. Parts of the tank had turned a bright white like a light bulb.

  There were dead bodies around the tanks; the implication was clear to all of the men. There wouldn’t be much time to escape if they were hit. This thought lay as heavily in the air as the smell of cordite and charcoal. Just ahead, Danny saw a soldier kneeling in a crater. There was a dead body beside him. The boy, for he was no older than Danny, was crying.

  ‘Eighty-eights,’ said Danny as he surveyed the carnage.

  ‘Aye,’ agreed PG. ‘Eighty-eights. Must have caught them at dawn.’

  ‘Certainly looks that way,’ Benson, speaking for the first time since they’d entered the first few hundred yards of the battle zone. The sound of shelling up ahead was a reminder that they, too, would soon be encountering those same eighty-eights that had wrought such terror on the tank crews a few hours earlier. ‘We can’t let their deaths be in vain, men. We have to break through.’

  Danny nodded. What else could the captain say? It was clear that the resolve of the men in the tank had been shaken by witnessing the carnage of earlier.

  Danny put his eyes to the viewer. The haze on the horizon was making it difficult to see very much except for the tanks ahead and the black smoke rising skyward. What lateral vision he did have revealed an impressive sight. Left and right, there were tanks on the march. Some were 3 RTR, others were attached to other regiments like the Staffs and the Notts.

  PG began to test the steering causing the tank to zig left then zag right. A nod from Benson was Archie Andrews’ cue to test the traverse of the turret. He wheeled left causing the turret to turn several degrees before reversing this and restoring the gun and the turret to its original position.

  Progress was slow. They had travelled for over an hour yet still remained a few miles away from the fighting. The odd effect of this was to increase the desire of the men to just get on with it. The sound of battle was unquestionably growing louder, however. They were in a No Man’s Land now. The first signs of German dead were visible along with some Italian and even some German soldiers marching towards the Allied lines to become prisoners of war. This gave them all renewed heart. PG began to whistle ‘Deutchland Uber Alles’ much to the amusement of the rest of the crew.

  Danny smiled but was reluctant to join in. Whistling is difficult when your throat is tighter than a hangman’s noose. His eyes remained fixed to his viewer, but the heat haze was stronger now. However, for the first time, he saw the telegraph poles. They were nearing the Rahman track. On the other side lay the Afrika Korps.

  Every second brought them closer to their destiny.

  -

  Basler didn’t have to give Jentz a verbal order. He pointed ahead. Jentz responded immediately and they were off. It was nearing eleven in the morning. Only another five hours until dusk, thought Manfred wearily. He joined Basler in standing outside the turret. They looked around at the battered remnants of the Regiment 8.

  ‘How many tanks do we have left?’ asked Manfred.

  ‘I don’t know. Five perhaps. The other regiments haven’t been hit so badly. The 21st Panzers are at full strength. Who knows how many tanks the Italians have left.’

  ‘Enough to hold off the British?’

  The answer was ‘probably yes’ but they both knew that the Afrika Korps was on borrowed time. The wave after wave of attacks from the Allies was sapping their strength like a leak in an engine.

  The dust thrown up by the tanks made it difficult to ascertain their strength but by the sound of their engines, Manfred thought it was less than fifty.

  Basler looked around him and said to himself, ‘With this we must halt a division?’ He shook his head.

  ‘Who takes over from the captain?’ asked Manfred suddenly.

  Basler glanced at Manfred. Oddly, he seemed amused by the question. Manfred shrugged. He was curious.

  ‘Not me, if that’s what you are asking.’

  ‘It was,’ replied Manfred.

  ‘Lieutenant Lindner,’ said Basler, putting the field glasses back up to his eyes. Manfred wondered if he was hurt at being overlooked.

  ‘I thought he’d been wounded,’ responded Manfred after a few minutes of silence.

  ‘He was. Mustn’t have been too bad.’

  They sat in silence listening to the sound of battle: the crump of anti-tank guns, the chatter of machine guns, the crack of rifle fire. Then, with a nod, Basler indicated that Manfred should return to his position. The explosions were growing louder. The smoke thicker. It hung like a shroud in the air, obscuring the enemy ahead. The smell of death was everywhere now.

  ‘Did you see anything?’ asked Kleff indicating towards the east with his eyes.

  ‘Not yet. Can certainly hear it,’ said Manfred. The distant booms were increasingly less distant.

  The tank moved ahead cautiously. Within minutes they would be within range of the enemy anti-tank shells. That would be Jentz’s signal to speed up and the column would disperse.

  Manfred felt his stomach begin to churn once more. The brutal reality of what they were about to face was made all the more acute by seeing the seemingly indestructible Stiefelmayer fall.

  -

  Shells began to rain down on them. Danny, in fact the whole tank, flinched as a loud explosion to their right destroyed one of the Allied tanks. PG was still manoeuvring the tank left and right. In this he was helped by the crippled or destroyed tanks acting as slalom posts.

  The concussive impact of the shells was physical. The earth was shaking at the barrage they were going through. If this is what it was like now with many guns disabled, what must it have been like earlier for the first assault, wondered Danny. Bullets began to ping uselessly against the tank like hail on a window.

  McLeish, who had access to a periscope, began to update Danny on what he could see a few minutes into the onslaught.

  ‘Must be half a dozen tanks down already. I can see four fires.’

  ‘Anyone getting out?’ asked Danny.

  ‘Some, not many,’ answered McLeish ominously.

  As he said this another explosion, close by, rocked the tank. The sooner they could get out of this barrage of anti-tank fire the better. There was no response they could offer. Danny preferred to take his chances against the Panzers than face this. And when the shelling stopped would be the moment they came face to face with the enemy tanks. That much was certain. The low hum overhead of bombers had been a continual accompaniment to the noise of battle. If there was any comfort to be drawn it was the knowledge that the enemy would also be on the receiving end of a similar bombardment.

  They pushed on for another couple of minutes. Danny glanced down at PG. He was tapping at the dashboard repeatedly.

  ‘What’s wrong PG?’ asked Danny.

  PG was not a man known
to worry about things. Any nervousness was hidden behind his normally grim expression. The face that turned around to Danny was white.

  ‘I don’t know,’ said PG. His voice was tight. ‘We seem to have lost a lot of fuel.’

  ‘What’s wrong down there?’ this was Benson. He ducked his head inside the turret and glared at PG.

  ‘Our fuel, sir. It’s disappearing. I don’t know if it’s the damn dashboard or if we were hit.’

  -

  Manfred gazed ahead through his viewer. The horizon was black and red with fire and smoke. They would soon be within range of the Allied anti-tank guns. It was a case of hold your breath and hope for the best. The tanks were widely dispersed and driving hard towards the chaos and destruction ahead. On the other side of it lay the enemy tanks.

  Manfred glanced down at Jentz. Manfred wiled the tank to go faster but the tank was hardly one of Mercedes Benz’s Silver Arrows and Jentz was no von Brauchitsch. No one wanted to endure the hellish rain of shells for one second longer than necessary.

  Manfred gripped the wheel that traversed the turret tightly; his muscles tensed for the moment when the tank would be rocked like a boat in a storm. For this was surely a storm towards which they were heading.

  Basler was rigid, he kept half a head out of the turret. He was a man who seemed to exist only in the present. This was why Manfred admired him so much. By comparison, Manfred felt like an old man, weighed down by his memory of past times at the Hitler Youth and regret for not realising what it had cost him.

  They forged ahead and soon the first shattering screams of shells shredded the air around them. The tank was filled with the foul-smelling stench of war. More and more derelict tanks cluttered the landscape. Every second brought them closer to the other side of this hellish bombardment. There they would hopefully hit the sides of the British tanks with the wedge formation they’d adopted.

  The first evidence of the destroyed gun placements dotted the landscape. Dead bodies and body parts strewn like flower petals in early autumn. But this was no Eden. They cleared the ridge and had first sight of the enemy in the distance.

  -

  Danny noticed the shelling had eased. They seemed to have reached a No Man’s Land. But this was a graveyard with blackened metal acting as tombstones to the fallen.

  PG slowed the tank down at Benson’s request. The captain was, once more, with his head outside the turret gazing at the heat haze in the distance. Shots pinged off the tank.

  ‘Careful, sir,’ warned Danny. ‘Jerry’s still out there.’

  ‘Thank you, Shaw, I’m quite aware of that,’ replied Benson, who remained where he was.

  Danny gazed through his viewer but could see nothing in the shimmering silver and black horizon. Plumes of smoke were still rising. Distant bombing was visible as the Allied twenty-five pounders and RAF gave the Afrika Korps a taste of what the tanks had just been through. Dense black smoke with orange flames, some twenty feet high, provided a guard of honour for the newly arriving Allied tanks.

  ‘Ahh,’ said Benson after some moments. ‘I think I see our friends now.’

  Andrews glanced up at Benson then met Danny’s eyes. The look on his face was clear. Time to get ready.

  ‘Distance three zero, zero, zero yards.’

  The radio crackled to life.

  ‘Ready, Shaw?’ asked Benson.

  ‘Yes, sir, High Explosive HE.’

  Danny looked through his viewer. He saw the dark shapes moving in the distance. They reminded him of the Errol Flynn movie he’d seen a few months back when Custer first sees the Sioux warriors in the distance. The wide ridge, as far as Danny could see, was filled with dark shapes. In between lay the remains of what had been and what would be.

  A tank graveyard.

  His finger hovered over the firing button.

  ‘Fire.’

  47

  ‘How far do you think?’ asked Manfred.

  ‘Three kilometres and closing,’ said Basler without taking his eyes away from his binoculars.

  Still too far for them to do any real damage but they would soon be within the range of the new Allied tanks. Some of the Mark IV’s opened up. They were similarly equipped with a seventy-five-millimetre gun. This gave them some chance, at least. Manfred gripped his wheel and began to work it left then right to test the traverse.

  Jentz was steering in a sharp zig zag too, aware that the Allied High Explosive HE rounds would soon be landing near them. Manfred’s left arm was already chaffing against the turret ring. The amount of room wasn’t enough for someone of his height. The rapid swings being performed by Jentz added to his discomfort.

  The horizon erupted into a series of white puffs of smoke. The enemy had commenced firing. Basler confirmed this but added nothing else. What was there to say? Within minutes, if they survived that long, they’d be in a melee with the enemy. Manfred glanced down at Kiel. The loader nodded and used his eyes to indicate the HE shell had been loaded.

  The first set of shells exploded around a hundred metres in front of them. Rock and dust flew twenty metres up into the air.

  Jentz moved in line behind a derelict tank some five hundred metres ahead. Good idea, though Manfred. It wasn’t much but it, at least, might persuade the gunners on the other side to choose another target they could see.

  ‘Brehme,’ said Basler.

  Manfred gazed through his telescopic sight. Basler confirmed his own calculation that they were now two and a half thousand metres separating the two sides. More explosions split the air around the tank. One after another the Panzers were hit. One erupted into flame. Bits of plate exploded outwards.

  More blasts ripped around them like a firework display. The tank rocked back and forth. The sound deafened them. Manfred ducked instinctively then the shelling stopped momentarily. Manfred looked around. Kiel was staring up at them. There was a strange look on his face. Manfred frowned then turned to Basler.

  ‘Sir?’ said Manfred. He looked up. Basler was no longer standing. He seemed to be half slumped against the hatch. Manfred leapt up and pulled Basler down. Half his lower jaw was missing.

  He was dead.

  Manfred and Kleff stared at the dead body. Jentz, unaware of what had happened, was shouting to them.

  ‘Aren’t we firing at them?’

  Kiel turned around. His eyes widened in shock. He touched Jentz’s arm. The driver frowned and then followed the wild eyes of Kiel towards the fallen lieutenant.

  ‘My God,’ said Jentz.

  ‘Kleff, you take over at the gun. Kiel, you load,’ said Manfred immediately. There wasn’t time to mourn Basler. Manfred took Basler’s position at the hatch. He put his head through just as another explosion nearby rocked the tank. They were now past another derelict tank. Less than a couple of kilometres away, he could see a hundred or more enemy tanks. He crouched back inside and removed something from Basler’s hand. He stared at the binoculars. A wave of sadness passed through him.

  They were wet with Basler’s blood.

  -

  ‘Was that you?’ asked Benson watching one of the approaching Panzers erupt into flame.

  ‘Yes, sir,’ replied Danny. The shot had been a direct hit from nearly two thousand yards.

  ‘Good shot,’ said Benson. ‘It’s going to get sticky…’

  The first explosions began to crash around them drowning out the captain’s chance to finish the sentence. Gouts of desert shot upwards like malign fountains. The intensity of machine gun fire increased. The tank felt like it was in the middle of a hail hurricane.

  ‘They’re on our flanks, too,’ warned Benson but noted Danny was already traversing right to deal with the fire coming from the right. This was possible even on the side gun, but the degree of traverse was severely limited.

  Green and red tracer fire split the air between the two sides. Much of it harmlessly bouncing off the tank. But the German tanks were beginning to find their range with the big guns.

  Danny saw one tank split
in two as the turret flew upwards: a horrible reminder of the death of Sergeant Reed and Lieutenant Turner. Danny’s tank pushed on past the destroyed tank. There could be no stopping. No one would have survived such an explosion. Just ahead, another tank erupted into flames, but a couple of men escaped from the hatch at the side. They were gunned down. Danny’s eyes widened in shock. This was the first time he’d seen this. Rage gripped him. They would pay.

  ‘Armour piercing,’ ordered Danny.

  Benson was back on the intercom, this time to the second gunner, Archie Andrews, ‘Eight hundred yards, Andrews, get ready to fire.’

  Archie Andrews fired his first round just as Danny launched the first of his AP shells.

  ‘Both short,’ said Benson. There was a trace of irritation in his voice. Fear, too. In a matter of a few minutes the two cavalry charges would meet. The more of the enemy they could kill the better chance they would have.

  PG was now slaloming around destroyed tanks. This made life a little more difficult for Danny and Andrews. Danny could understand the natural inclination of anyone to avoid being hit. The constant twisting and turning was interfering with their ability to damage the wave of death approaching them.

  Benson saw the problem immediately and said, ‘Wodehouse, straight ahead. Give Andrews and Shaw a chance.’

  The crash of explosions and the screech of tanks was now deafening. They were seconds away from chaotic intermingling. In fact, they were being hit from three sides. Tanks were on their left flank as well as their right. Ahead lay the big anti-tank guns and field artillery.

  How was anyone supposed to get through this?

  -