Tides of Valor

by Peter Albano

  “Gunner ready, sir,” Dempster said. “Tube loaded with APC.”

  “Driver ready, sir,” Powell said. “Standing by to start generator and engines.”

  “Loader ready, sir,” Murphy said.

  Lloyd glanced down through the hatch into the turret. Murphy was seated behind the breech with a ready round of APC in his hands. Around him and beneath him, ninety-one more rounds were stored in lockers and ready boxes. Just to the right of the breech, Dempster sat with his eye to his range finder, hands gripping the elevating and traversing cranks of the cannon. His right foot was on the firing pedal. Seated in the front of the hull, Powell hunched over his controls and stared into his periscope. Only his back was visible. Lloyd felt a surge of pride. His crew was ready. “Bully, lads. Stand by. Our guests will be here shortly,” he said, still masking his concerns and doubts with a show of confidence he did not really feel.

  The cloud grew into a brown smudge on the horizon. Then the first enemy tank appeared, crawling like a clumsy beetle over the rim of the escarpment at least two miles away. It was a Panzer III. Quickly, it was followed by twenty-one more tanks. A reinforced company. Obviously afraid of mines, they formed a column of twos, advanced a short distance, and then stopped. Lloyd was sure his brigade was unseen, but why did the enemy halt?

  Then he saw the half-tracks filled with infantry. They charged out of the wadi and streamed through the corridor formed by the tanks. Within minutes, a dozen half-tracks fanned out ahead of the panzers and advanced on Bir Fuad Ridge. Obviously, the German commander was suspicious, and in the tradition of Rommel, he was conserving his tanks and risking his infantry first.

  Lloyd wondered at the tactics. It was foolish to send fully loaded vehicles into a possible mine field. If the Germans suspected a trap—and they obviously did—they should dismount their infantry and send them ahead in a line of skirmishers. Rommel must be in a terrible hurry. He always was. Pursuing a retreating enemy closely. Perhaps, this time, too closely. Engines roaring and leaving clouds of dust, the halftracks came on. What a dreadful waste of fine infantry.

  Lloyd spoke into the intercom, “Stand by. Gunner. Fire on my command. Murphy and Dempster take out the halftracks with APC, I will engage the infantry. I want the tanks. But we have no choice.” Lloyd heard his commands repeated and acknowledged. Quickly, he unlimbered the Besa and grabbed the pistol grip. Swinging the perfectly balanced forty-seven-pound weapon around on its post mount, it felt as light as a feather. “Death is as light as a feather,” he had heard an old soldier say once. He snorted. Now he knew what had been on the old man’s mind. He snapped off the safety and trained the weapon on the advancing enemy.

  Lloyd licked his lips as the big half-tracks entered the mine field. Nothing happened and the Germans bored in closer. They were so close Lloyd could see the goggled drivers through their open ports and the commander standing in the center leading vehicle. Their faces were brown with dust and their tunics were filthy. Only the helmets of the troops were visible, swaying from side to side in the rear of the vehicles. The panzers remained stationary, engines idling. Then it happened.

  The lead half-track was engulfed by a yellow flash that hurled it skyward end over end. Men were flung from the machine like rag dolls, wheels, hood, weapons, and chunks of wreckage arcing out from the yellow blast like the blooming of an evil flower of death. Then a second vehicle struck another powerful antitank mine and disintegrated like the first.

  Instantly, the survivors stopped and the infantry poured over the sides. They were only four hundred yards from the ridge.

  For the first time, Lloyd switched on the command circuit. Every man in his crew was on the circuit. Orders were only given once. “This is Rooney-oh-One. Rooney Command, commence firing! Commence! Commence!”

  Obviously, Dempster’s finger had been on the trigger and a target was in his sights. Preceded by only four rounds of tracers from his coaxial Besa, which bounced off a half-track almost directly ahead, the two-pounder fired with a vicious crack that struck Lloyd’s eardrums like the end of a whip. The tank rocked backward from the recoil of the high-velocity shell and the half-track exploded, the armor-piercing shell boring halfway through its engine before detonating.

  Every tank seemed to fire simultaneously. Flame rippled up and down the length of the ridge and a steady roar of gunfire boomed across the desert. Clouds of fine dust and brown smoke billowed and Lloyd coughed as the pungent smell of cordite filled his nostrils. It was time to report to division.

  He switched channels and shouted into his microphone, “Scrooge, Scrooge, this is Rooney-oh-One.” An incongruously calm voice acknowledged Lloyd continued, “A force of twenty-two Panzer Threes with infantry and halftracks on my front. Am engaging. Request artillery and aerial support.”

  “Roger. We have pressure on other fronts. Will send you what we can, Rooney-oh-One.”

  Watching the fire of his tanks rip through the German vehicles and staring at the waiting panzers in the distance, Lloyd said, “You’d better, old boy, if you want to spend your next leave in Cairo instead of a prison camp. Out!”

  The quick-firing two-pounders engulfed the German line in explosions, half-tracks staggering, exploding, and burning. But the German infantry was well trained. Quickly the survivors spread out and went to ground, realizing they had stumbled into a major line of resistance. Through the din Lloyd could hear the Germans shouting their battle cry, “Heia safari!”—Bantu for “Drive onward!”

  Muttering “We’ll see how bloody far you drive,” Lloyd brought the Besa to bear on a squad of ten men rushing to a knoll. Four of them were carrying a light machine gun and two boxes of ammunition. He picked up the knoll with his bead first and then traversed back to the Germans.

  Heart beating so fast he could feel the blood pounding in his temples, he pressed the trigger. The machine gun leapt and trembled in his hands like a live thing. Even through his earphones, the hammering clatter dinned on Lloyd’s eardrums. Firing 750 rounds of ball a minute, the breech devoured the belt, bright brass shell casings spewing from the extractor, pinging and pattering off the turret and hull to the ground. His first slugs were short, kicking up small columns of dirt and clods. Following his tracers, he raised his sights and caught the first man with his stream. A burly sergeant, he stiffened as if frozen on the spot and dropped like a windblown board. Then Lloyd moved the weapon from right to left, bowling the soldiers over one after the other. Some leapt and flung out their arms, others whirled like dervishes, threw their weapons into the air, and tumbled to the hard desert floor to lie still in the embrace of death. Within seconds, the entire squad was down.

  Releasing the trigger, Lloyd felt a familiar, disturbing tingling deep down inside, almost a sexual ache in his loins. Strange, how killing men could be so close to bedding a woman. Years ago he had felt this sensation in the Somme Valley many times during the Great War, and it was still with him. There was guilt, but it was over the reaction, not the dead men.

  Murphy and Dempster were working the two-pounder like madmen, firing a round every two seconds. Within a minute every half-track had been hit by APC rounds and all were burning or disabled.

  “Loader! Antipersonnel!” Lloyd shouted into his microphone. “Driver, start the generator and engines.” He switched to the command channel, “This is Rooney-oh-One—Rooney Command, start generators and engines.’’ The tank trembled as Powell started the generator and the two Leyland engines. The big diesels rumbled in slow idle. Glancing up and down the ridge, the brigadier could see blue exhaust smoke rising from every Matilda. He disliked idling his engines in the hot desert sun. Not only could they overheat, but the interior of the tank, which was an oven anyway, could become unbearable. Too often, crews collapsed from heat exhaustion. But he had no choice. The only relief the crew had was a small fan mounted at the rear of the turret. It did nothing but move hot air around the interior.

  Murphy
shouted, “Antipersonnel, sir,” and the gun continued its rapid fire. But now, its shrapnel-loaded shells probed for troops huddled behind rocks and in small depressions. All of the tanks were searching out the infantrymen, explosions flinging dirt, rocks, men, and pieces of men into the air. Some Germans ran, but mercilessly, the hail of death followed them, cutting them down in their tracks. Guns were harvesting corpses the way reapers cut wheat.

  “Heia safari!” Powell shouted sarcastically from his seat in the front of the tank. Murphy and Dempster laughed.

  A black pall of death billowed into the sky and hung over the battlefield. Now the smell of cordite was mixed with that of burning oil, rubber, petrol, and the sickening sweet odor of burning flesh. There was a sharp fluting sound like the flight of a great insect past Lloyd’s head. Then a ping as a bullet ricocheted off the Matilda and then another and another. Some brave German infantrymen were holding their positions and firing despite the murderous hail of shells and bullets. The commander in the Matilda to the brigadier’s left flung up his arms and threw his head back as if in prayer, and dropped through the hatch, the top of his head blown away. Lloyd could taste the sour gorge of his bully beef lunch rise into his throat as a familiar cold hand clutched at his guts. But he could not “button up.” Visibility from a secured tank was terrible and enemy infantry could sneak up and disable tanks with demolition charges. He would only close the hatch when engaging enemy tanks. He continued firing and the German response slackened and almost ceased.

  Then, three Germans came to their feet and began to run back toward one of their vehicles with its right track blown off. There a machine gunner was firing and the trio obviously wanted to find shelter behind the truck. Lloyd cut down one with a short burst and then the firing pin clicked on an empty chamber.

  Cursing, the brigadier released the ammunition box and threw it over the side. Frantically, he reached down into the hatch, grabbed a full box from its steel bracket welded to the side of the turret, fitted it onto its mount, and jerked the lid up. He released the lock on top of the Besa’s breech and flipped the cover up, exposing the feed mechanism. Angrily watching the pair of Germans vanish behind the half-track, he grabbed the first brass-tag holder on the belt and passed it into the receiver. A quick motion of his left hand pulled the tag through until he heard a clicking sound. He slammed the cover down and pushed until he heard the spring-loaded locking device snap into place. Then, a quick pull of the cocking handle and the gib on the extractor grasped the rim of the first round. A second pull, and he heard the feed block clatter as the powerful return spring drove the first round into the firing chamber. The gun was ready, but there were no targets.

  Now there were twenty-five panzers. They had deployed into five groups of five and had moved forward a hundred yards on a thousand-yard front. They had stopped and squatted patiently—waiting. And Lloyd knew why they waited.

  Then he heard it. A low rumble high in the sky. Aircraft. The patent sound of Jumo engines. Even before he saw them, Lloyd knew they were Stukas. He brought up his glasses and he felt a sudden deadly tension that scraped along his spine like a serrated knife. They were unmistakable. Twenty-seven aircraft at perhaps six-thousand-feet approaching from the west. Gull-winged with spatted wheels, each had an awesome one-thousand-pound bomb slung beneath the fuselage on a crutch and a half-dozen smaller bombs racked under the wings. They all wore the unusual desert camouflage of the dreaded Stukageschwcuier One.

  Nothing was as horrifying as a dive-bomber attack. Artillery shells and bullets could snuff you out in a blink, but a man never saw his death coming. The Stuka was different. It arrogantly paraded its killing power before blowing you to bits. It gave a man a chance to stare at the bombs tucked against its belly and wings and think about his own annihilation.

  Lloyd’s guts spasmed and he felt the tension race up his spine to his neck and scalp on the icy feet of hundreds of frozen insects. The hair seemed to rise from the back of his head. Fear, an old acquaintance, was back. He had known him intimately on the Somme and found him again in the desert. He wanted to hide—drop into the armored safety of the turret. But, instead, he caught his breath, threw his shoulders back, and clenched his jaw in a rictus of determination. Switching his channel selector, he called division, “Scrooge, this is Rooney-oh-One. At least twenty-seven Stukas preparing to attack my position and now I have twenty-five Panzer Threes on my front.”

  “Roger, Rooney-oh-One,” the voice said.

  “Where’s the bloody Desert Air Force?” Lloyd shouted. “And I need artillery.”

  “There are other priorities.”

  “Other priorities, my bloody arse!” Lloyd shouted, watching the aircraft casually stack up in their usual oblique line that always preceded an attack. The brigadier switched to his command channel, “This is Rooney-oh-One. Stand by for air attack.”

  The command was unnecessary. Every commander of every Matilda already had his machine gun trained on the approaching bombers. Suddenly the pitch of the engines dropped as the pilots set their propellers at full coarse and Lloyd could see the hinged slat-like air brakes drop below the outer wings. They had less than a minute now. He felt like a drowning man with a cement block tied to his ankles. His wife, Bernice, gray, worn with years of worry, was there, eyes pooling with tears, lips trembling. His children, Bonnie and Trevor, smiled up at him. His dear brother, Randolph, flashed by, splendid in his blue RAF uniform. Oh, for the RAF. If only Randolph and his Spitfires were here. They’d bloody well sweep the Stukas from the sky.

  The first bomber dropped off into its steep dive. Engine roaring, it hurtled downward like a thunderbolt from hell. Lloyd brought the Besa up and brought the bead of his sights on the first aircraft now followed by a half dozen more and the others were peeling off. The planes were headed directly for him. Lloyd had always had this feeling when under dive-bombing attack. All men did.

  The shrieking began. Sirens—the British called them trombones—were attached to the landing gear. The howl was supposed to demoralize even seasoned troops. It was unnecessary. Every man was frightened out of his wits, but not demoralized. Anyway, there was no place to run—to hide.

  The first plane released its bombs—a one-thousand-pounder and six smaller bombs. The black, pointed, finned missiles hurtled straight down on top of Lloyd’s head. Immediately the pilot pulled the stick back. But Lloyd knew his momentum would carry him very low—within range. The Germans were careless. They still did not expect AA fire from British tanks.

  The bombs shrieked and howled like a hurricane as they plummeted. The pilot had released too soon. The “stick” struck between the lines, about eighty feet in front of the Fourth Armored Brigade. The explosion of the one-thousand-pounder was cataclysmic. A burst of light that seared the retina of his eyes shot two hundred feet high from the desert floor, shrouded with boulders and dust. An earthquake struck the ridge, Lloyd’s Matilda bouncing up and down on its treads like a frightened toad, dirt tumbling into the pit.

  The Stuka was very low, pulling out of its dive with its belly exposed. Leading the aircraft like a hunter, shooting partridge, Lloyd squeezed the trigger and at least six more machine guns unleashed a storm of tracers that stitched the German’s belly. Trailing smoke, the Stuka banked off toward the Western Desert.

  Lloyd heard another roar. A whine. The whistling sound of supercharged Allisons. Racing in from the east, high. Needle-nosed aircraft with huge air-scoops under their pylon-like propeller bosses. American-built Curtis P-40 Tomahawks. Unmistakable. Not as good a fighter as the Spitfire, but still easily superior to the JU 87.

  But hell was raining from the sky. Bomber after bomber released its bombs and pulled from its dive over the ridge. Two were hit and plunged straight on into the desert, dying in convulsive explosions and greasy black smoke. But their bombs made Bir Fuad Ridge a heaving inferno of hellfire. The tank next to Lloyd’s shot upward at least fifty feet into the sky on the ti
p of a giant blast. More explosions shook and rocked the Matilda like a dory in a Channel storm. Lloyd cursed as his aim was spoiled and he sprayed the sky harmlessly.

  More Junkers screamed down. Would it ever end? To both sides Matildas were blown to fragments or whipped into the air like trash in a tornado. The ground quaked and the tank rocked and bounced, jerking the brigadier from side to side. Lloyd felt as if he were caught in the bowels of an erupting volcano. Screaming oaths into the bedlam, he fired in short bursts as Stuka after Stuka pulled out low and streaked to the south and west. Two more tumbled to the earth, disintegrating in long yellow smears of yellow flame and black smoke, flinging debris over hundreds of feet of desert. Lloyd jerked another box of ammunition from the turret.

  Then a one-thousand-pounder struck just a few feet from the Matilda. The flash like a sun flare sent afterimages flashing across Lloyd’s retinas and hundreds of tons of earth and rock heaved into the sky like a great curtain. The concussion struck like a sledgehammer, the earth itself writhing and convulsing like a mortally wounded creature. The Besa was ripped from Lloyd’s hands and he was hurled to the side of the turret, impacting his ribs. Pain shot all the way from his neck to his toes and he dropped into the hatch. Grabbing the cover, he slammed it shut and fell into his seat.

  Murphy grabbed his shoulders, steadied him while Lloyd held his side. Dempster and Powell both turned, Powell coming out of his seat. They all had the concerned look of children staring at a sick parent. “Bugger all, sir,” Murphy said. “You ain’t caught one, Gen’ral ‘iggins?”

  Lloyd caught his breath, shook his head while boulders rained down and bounced off the armor like shot. “No. No. Just a bruise, Private.” He gestured. “Open the hatch and return to your post.”

  The cockney reached up, pushed hard against the cover, and flung it open. Dirt and clods rained in. Gritting his teeth against the pain, Lloyd climbed back up to the Besa. The tank was almost buried, but the engines still ran. They were still in fighting trim. He looked up just as the first Tomahawks roared over not more than five hundred feet high.