by Denis Avey
The information put together by our night patrols had helped make it a big success. Some of our officers began to measure the number of prisoners by the acre, rather than the thousand. Judging by the documents I have seen since, the congratulatory messages were soon flying back and forth between the top brass. I don’t recall a single ‘thank you’ being passed on to the boys in the desert in all my time in action. I don’t think the top brass felt the need.
2RB found a very good cook amongst the Italian prisoners. He was spirited away by our officers and put to work in their mess kitchen as ‘Rifleman Antonio’. He lasted four weeks before anyone senior found out, even though he had to share a cave with a colonel during an air raid.
We captured Sidi Barrani, that windblown fort with a battered wall and a few hutments, where Il Duce had boasted that he had got the trams running. That was 10 December and within twenty-four hours the desert greeted the news with a monumental sandstorm.
We didn’t have it all our own way. The Italian air force had a habit of spoiling the party, so when there was a whiff of a spotter plane around we were ordered out to churn up the desert. We would head safely away from our main force and skid around frantically with tracks leading all over the place. Our dust cloud, climbing into the air, created the impression of a far bigger force. Then we would retreat with dust coating our faces and lining our mouths and wait for the flying circus to come over and bomb the open desert. They usually obliged.
It didn’t always work. We were back in reserve when an Italian fighter screamed overhead, then another. There was no time to run. I hit the deck getting a mouthful of desert and hoping the pilot had had too much coffee. I counted about a dozen CR42s in all, ugly biplanes with a squashed body, but it was the big Savoia bombers I was worried about. They were over us soon enough, a trio of them, lumbering beasts with an extravagant three engines. The first blasts shook the earth but the bombs fell short of the target. Before they could have another go, help arrived. They had far more planes than we did but a few Hurricanes had been sent out to take over from our old Gladiator biplanes and these now showed up. The chase was on high above us and pretty soon we were alone again in the desert.
Three days later they came back in strength at 1100 hours. There were ten Savoias this time and not a Hurricane in the sky. We all hit the deck and one of the bombs fell within thirty yards of me in a small depression in the undulating desert. When the sky cleared and we could stand again I saw from the commotion below me that someone had copped it, a lovely chap called Jumbo Meads. He was a popular sergeant, very tall, blond and handsome and not the average, nasty NCO. We felt his loss all right but you couldn’t afford to get bogged down in sorrow. There was never any time.
The Savoia bombers were a nuisance, particularly at night when relays of them would fly around dropping one bomb at a time, to spoil our sleep. That was why I took to kipping under the carrier.
Soon after that I spent a day driving 3rd Lieut. Merlin Montagu Douglas Scott. He was a grandson of the Duke of Buccleuch, related to the royal family, and a first-class officer, both precise and pedantic. We headed for Halfaya Pass and Sollum to see if the enemy was there. Montagu Douglas Scott had a habit of getting a bit too close to the opposition. A few days earlier, he had taken the same route in the middle of a khamsin dust storm with hardly any visibility at all to see if the Italians were still holding a large camp at Halfway House, on top of the escarpment. He found it, hidden in the swirling sand. There was a low stone wall right round it and the whole place seemed deserted, shallow trenches everywhere with canvas covers and rocks piled round for protection. They must have left in a hurry. These little dugouts had bottles, camp beds, letters, photos – all kinds of stuff in them. There were two lookout towers swaying in the wind. All he could hear was creaking and the flapping of canvas in the driving sandstorm.
Then he got new orders over the radio. The Italians from the camp were retreating a few miles ahead. He chased after them with his four carriers, capturing stragglers in increasing numbers until all he could do was disarm them and leave them by the road. Soon he started coming across abandoned lorries, out of petrol or with punctured tyres. The khamsin was still building and the air was filled with reddish sand. Ten miles on, something dark appeared through the haze, a pair of big Italian trucks towing guns, surrounded by around thirty men. He captured the lot of them but right then the khamsin finally lifted and showed him the last thing he wanted to see. He had stumbled into the whole Italian garrison, hundreds of them stretching ahead in a long, long column. Everybody started shooting at point-blank range and he had to beat a hasty retreat.
On this occasion, we got a bit too close again, seeing enemy trucks and motorcycles ahead, appearing and reappearing through the alleys of the little port of Sollum. We could see Italian artillery high above on top of the escarpment but when we had a go at the trucks, the guns started on us so we had to get away pretty sharply.
Montagu Douglas Scott was a strange chap. He never missed a thing. In the middle of all this, he told us how impressed he was with the way Italians built their desert roads. He pulled us through that one and we were mightily relieved when darkness fell and we slipped back into the desert to leaguer up for the night.
I wasn’t impressed with the trappings of military rank but I knew I could do the job better than some of the regulars. I had already seen one chap I didn’t really rate make it to captain. It was dead men’s shoes in those days but the ordinary lads didn’t get a look in. It wasn’t right. I had been made an acting corporal on merit on account of my shooting, and that was how it should be.
By then Platoon Sergeant-Major Endean was proving to be the bane of my life. He didn’t have much time for recruits like us. He was a regular and he treated us as if we’d walked straight off civvy street. Some of us had, but there was a lot of prejudice in those days. People like the PSM didn’t see people’s strengths.
We got the order to move forward under cover of darkness one night and as I was in charge I sat alongside the driver in the truck with six lads in the back as we picked our way through the rough desert. He was steering around a field of rocks, peering into the night to avoid the worst, and following the vehicle in front when there was an unforgiving thud below and we stopped. I climbed out and looked underneath to find we’d hammered the sump. We weren’t going anywhere for a while.
We were pretty vulnerable out there without any cover but the company left us to defend ourselves and carried on.
I arranged a guard so we could rest. In the morning I ordered the lads to break open the emergency tea rations so they could have a brew and thaw out. With the benefit of daylight and a bit of warmth we got the vehicle running again but before we got very far I heard the menacing sound of planes overhead. A handful of Savoias swooped low. There was no anti-aircraft cover, so we were on our own. I managed to get hold of a tommy gun that I had been entrusted with and I let loose most of a magazine. Even at that range it had no effect. It was a clumsy thing. We hit the deck but the bombs exploded well away from us. After one pass the sky was clear and I breathed a little easier. They had better targets that day.
We got moving again and eventually reached the company and safety in numbers. I tracked down PSM Endean immediately and asked permission to replace the emergency tea ration from the stores. It should have been a formality. The lads had been cold and stuck out in the desert and they had needed warmth. It was my decision and it was the right one. Endean refused.
He took it as a breach of regulations and he was aggressive from the start. I was hot-headed at the best of times but I wouldn’t stand for pettiness. I wasn’t having any of it. He was keeping his distance and had placed himself behind some camouflage netting. He knew I might take a swing at him, officer or not. I was furious but I told him his parents should have married and left it at that. I had given an order in the interest of the men. For God’s sake it was a mug of tea, not a feast.
I knew he would get back at me and it didn’t
take him long. We were always anticipating a dawn attack so we deployed early. I had been suffering from dysentery for days but I struggled to get up and arranged the guard as usual. I was in a terrible state so I collapsed back on my bedroll in pain. I was sitting down when Endean showed up. He accused me of slacking and I was put on a charge straight away. I had obeyed orders and the guard was in place but it made no difference. Ill or not, he had got me.
The disciplinary hearing followed soon after but I was so angry that I refused to ask for mitigation. I couldn’t deny it; I knew what was really going on and it had nothing to do with that trumped-up charge. I was sitting on my bedroll because I was ill; it was as simple as that. I wouldn’t plead or squirm for them but I knew I was busted. They removed my stripe and messed up my chances. I accepted it but it still smarts after all these years. Fairness matters to me and I wouldn’t compromise on that, not even for an officer. I also knew there was no room for bad blood in the desert. I had to be able to rely on the lads at my shoulder and they on me. I got on with it but it still rankles, even now.
In the next few days, we chased the Italians out of Egypt. They retreated west, deeper into Libya, to two seaports with strong defences. The first was Bardia just up the coast from Halfaya Pass. The other, seventy-five miles further west, had a name we had hardly heard of then, a place called Tobruk.
Mussolini gave the job of defending Bardia to the colourful General Bergonzoli, known to the Italians as ‘Barba Elletrica’ because of his remarkable forked red beard. We were a bit less respectful. We called him ‘Electric Whiskers’. Mussolini told him to defend it to the last man.
He didn’t.
Bardia was in a little bay with steep cliffs. The Italian garrison was spread out in an eighteen-mile arc around it. The navy shelled them and the RAF bombed them for two days, then on 3 January 1941, the attack started. Our job was to swing round behind, make it look like we were the main attack coming from the far side and stop anyone escaping.
We were mopping up after an attack on an Italian artillery position when I saw odd claw-like marks in the sand next to the body of a dead Italian soldier, lying face down. With the life draining from his body he had made sweeping movements in the sand as if to hide or bury some object. I saw something shiny but was it a weapon or a booby trap? Scanning around for clues, I stepped forward warily. It wasn’t metal. The sun was glinting on highly polished leather so I scooped the sand away to reveal a narrow case perhaps five feet long. Inside was a beautiful gold silk flag, broken down to stow away for safety. It had gold pins through the staff and it was crowned with a decorative eagle. In his final moments on earth, the Italian artilleryman had been determined to prevent it falling into the hands of his enemies. I left it with him, buried somewhere in the sands of the desert.
Months later I spotted an old picture of the Pope in Rome done up in all his finery. He was blessing something. It was that same gold-coloured standard with its eagle headpiece.
Bardia fell. They surrendered almost to the last man. They say we took 100,000 prisoners. ‘Electric Whiskers’ was that last man and he slipped away.
Next it was on to Tobruk to do the same thing all over again. Our task now was to get a full picture of the Italian defences outside the port and that meant constant patrols, which often ended up with gunfights in the dark.
This was when I first experienced going deep into the heart of the enemy. It was the dead of night when we approached one Italian position. We suspected it contained big guns but we had no idea how well defended the camp was. The last thing the lads wanted was to run into something nasty when the attack started. The recce began as usual with the shakedown and noise check.
Crouching in the dark, the boss decided just he and I would go in, leaving the rest on guard outside to offer what cover they could if we had to beat a hasty retreat. The risk of falling on one of your own lads was great in an operation like this. The clicker was all we had to help identification. It was a tiny piece of metal that clicked when you pressed it and identified you as friendly.
The Italian outer defences were made up of two or three machine-gun posts on each side behind simple walls of rocks. They were right out in the desert alone and vulnerable but they were within shouting distance of their comrades. A yelp would have brought the whole shooting match down on our heads and we’d certainly miss breakfast.
The boss gestured silently and we went down on our bellies to begin crawling slowly forward, listening to Italian whispers in the night. It wasn’t unusual to find these outer sentries asleep but tonight they were talking and paying little attention. Cough or dislodge a loose rock and they would soon sit up and take notice. Music from a gramophone drifted across the desert from the main camp beyond. After another fifty yards I began to make out more sangars, rings of rock protecting heavier machine-gun nests designed to cut advancing infantrymen to shreds.
There was a sudden movement from the nearest sangar. Had they heard something? We froze, head down in the dirt. My chest was constricted, I hardly dared breathe. The moment passed and we moved slowly onwards, memorising the layout of the base as we went. We were still crawling when we approached the main inner camp. Looking for a place to scramble over the low wall, we settled on a spot midway between the nearest machine guns and slithered across on our bellies.
A big gun loomed dark ahead, one of their direction-finding artillery pieces that could lock on to the source of a radio signal and send over a large shell to spoil the bully-beef. That sounds lethal but it was before the days of computers. This was crude technology.
There were two more machine-gun posts in the central camp, which worried me less now we were inside. I was good at this. All the senses in my body were alert; my pulse was racing but I was in control. This was the education of the desert. I refused to let in fear that might cloud my judgement but I knew that if they raised the alarm we would have to shoot our way out.
Men were moving around between tents. They felt safe. There was the odour of cigar smoke from the officers’ tents, garlic from the cooking areas and I fancied you could smell cologne. The voices were louder now, soaring above the camp. There was always a big difference between the officers and men in the Italian military. These were officers and they were clearly living it up. But there was also a noise I hadn’t heard for sometime now. Above the deeper voices I caught the sound of women laughing. I don’t know if they were prostitutes or ordinary civilians but there they were, as clear as you like and unmistakeable. They seemed to be enjoying the party.
We should probably have returned the way we had come. There was a bit too much action on the base for my taste and we were getting more committed the deeper into the camp we went. Then, just feet away, a tent flap was thrown open, sending a shaft of light out across the camp. Although we were still in the shadows there was no choice. We both knew instantly the only way out was forwards. In the desert both armies looked shabby and identification wasn’t easy in the dark, despite our brown woollen hats. The Italians wore all kinds of things – we had even found hairnets in one of the camps we had taken. It must have been the fashion in Rome but it led to a good deal of sniggering.
There was no choice. We got to our feet and without so much as a glance left or right, we walked slowly, and with as much composure as we could muster, past the tents and through the inner camp until we were back in the shadows and could exit the other side. The entire base held perhaps 200 people and we had passed right through the centre of it unchallenged. It was only then that I noticed that the boss had his torch switched on and shining out of his pocket the whole time.
That was the routine, patrols at night then grab what sleep you could because the chances were you’d be off again as the next night fell. These patrols weren’t always plain sailing and soon I had a very close call. I had picked up a small wound on my forearm. It wouldn’t heal. It was bandaged up, but the sand got everywhere and it was a mess. The sleeve of my uniform kept the white bandage hidden and providing it stayed cover
ed and out of the moonlight I could go on patrol.
One night, we were sent to capture prisoners in an outlying post. If they could be persuaded to sing, the intelligence could be invaluable when we attacked. We were widely spread out so essentially I was on my own. I heard a single metallic click some distance away so I knew one of the lads was getting nervous.
I dropped down into a wadi some five or six feet deep and skirted around hoping to get a better vantage point. Knowledge was power on night patrols and you had to know the full story before you made a move. After a good distance in the gulley I began slowly climbing up, taking great pains not to dislodge any rocks. I heard a noise and stopped, pressed against the side of the shallow ravine. It was the sound of boots on stony ground. Someone was up there. I heard him take another step to the edge of the wadi. Then I saw him, an Italian sentry staring down into the darkness, but although he was looking towards me, he was seeing nothing or so I hoped. I was just a few feet below him and I fingered the trigger of my revolver. I was aiming at him and couldn’t miss at that distance but I knew that to fire would have woken the entire camp and they’d soon make tomato purée out of us.
The options racing through my mind would all bring catastrophe. I could scramble up and use the knife but he wasn’t going to stand there politely whilst I climbed out of the ravine. For all I knew there could be a whole platoon up there enjoying a silent smoke. I stayed put. I would shoot if he made the slightest noise but it could mean fighting a gun battle at close quarters.
Still hidden in the darkness of the wadi, I moved my arm a fraction and I saw him stiffen. I knew instantly I had exposed an edge of the white bandage just below my wrist. ‘Damn,’ I said to myself. Should I shoot, run and take my chances? I couldn’t see his face in the darkness but we were both in mortal danger and we knew it. His rifle was by his side. Lifting it to fire would have taken a second at least and I would have pulled the trigger and been running back through the wadi before he hit the ground. Instead he froze on the spot, hardly daring to breathe. We were both trapped.
