by Denis Avey
‘I’ll get the buggers,’ I shouted to Les, more in defiance than hope, as we ploughed into the machine-gun post. The carrier lurched again on its tracks as we mounted their position to the sound of metal being crushed and twisted below the tracks. I was sure the machine gunners were killed instantly but we were surrounded. It hardly made a difference now.
I grabbed a grenade, pulled the pin with my teeth and lobbed it with my arm arcing above the armour plating. It was impossible to know if the blast had any effect. I couldn’t see. The air was full of flying metal. I threw another grenade and another, hoping desperately that each blast would bring silence. It never came.
It didn’t feel like a bullet that hit me. It was just a smashing blow to my upper body as I stretched up to hurl my last grenade. I had been shot.
I was barely aware of the spud-masher grenade bouncing into the carrier.
I had been knocked down, stunned, into the driver’s well. Then there was an almighty blast. It was like having two heavy steel spikes hammered into my ears. Slowed down, it seemed as if my head was expanding and contracting with the force of accelerating air.
If the grenade had bounced down my side of the carrier, I would have been finished but the transmission casing between me and Les saved me by deflecting the hot metal up and away. I must have been knocked out by the blast and the carrier had plunged thirty feet off the edge of the escarpment.
When I came around the inside of the carrier was red and I was covered in gore, warm and sticky. I had half of poor old Les all over me; blood and God knows what else.
It wasn’t over. A German soldier towered over me silhouetted against the glare. If he chose to shoot me, that would be it. He was dragging me out of the carrier. He was angry and I didn’t expect special treatment, not here, not after what I’d done. I had just crushed his comrades. It was all the same to me now what happened. And there was dear old Les. A human shape was recognisable but little else. The grenade had exploded right in his lap.
The soldier didn’t shoot. I saw his lips move. He was rifling through the carrier hunting for the ammunition. Through the high-pitched squealing in my ears I could still hear gunfire in the distance. The other carriers were in trouble. Then I saw the gunner, crumpled on the ground. He wasn’t moving and his arm was badly mangled. Another young German came up. He looked at all the bright dents in the sides of the carrier where hundreds of bullets had hit. He ran his fingertips over them, smiling as if pleased with the accuracy of his aim.
Looking down at my leather jerkin with remnants of Les all over it, I knew straight away why I had been spared in those first few seconds of capture. It looked like I’d been blown apart too. They had taken me for dead.
My first reaction on seeing that Les had been blasted to kingdom come was, ‘Thank God it wasn’t me’. Later, much later, people would tell me that everyone wants to survive and that it was a normal response, but was it? I don’t know. I still don’t know. Like I said, in war you make excuses to yourself all the time.
Les was the chap with the twinkling eyes. I had come all the way from Liverpool with him, I’d danced with his sister Marjorie, sat around the kitchen table with his folks, laughed at their jokes and shared their food. It didn’t seem right. It troubles me as much now as it did seventy years ago. But you do what you have to do, to get through. The mind is a powerful thing. It can take you through walls.
Sidi Rezegh would become known to us as the forgotten battle, and to be a footnote within a forgotten battle is something indeed.
Chapter 7
The gunner was in a terrible state. His arm was all but severed by bullets and he was losing a lot of blood. I didn’t expect him to live. A German soldier applied a tourniquet. He made twisting gestures towards me with his hands and I caught the words, ‘Jede fünfzehn Minuten.’ He wanted me to release it regularly but I never had the chance. I was lifted onto a stretcher and taken away, leaving the shot-up carrier and Les behind.
I never found out what they did with his body. His remains were still there, slumped forward in his seat when they took me. His name is on the Alamein memorial. I hope someone gave him a proper burial.
Forgotten battle? It was a bloody disaster. Four of the carriers were lost in that action alone. I had minor wounds to my leg and my head and a more serious one to my upper arm. It would be some time before I learnt that Eddie Richardson, Regimental Eddie, had survived it. His carrier had launched off the escarpment at speed and made a lucky soft landing on a giant pile of jerry cans. He survived both the ambush and the flight and was taken prisoner. I think I saw him in the distance in a transit camp months later but I couldn’t get to him.
Bill Chipperfield, who had shared my cabin on the Otranto and had come to South Africa with me, was dead together with twenty lads from 2RB killed in the first two days of the Sidi Rezegh battle. Many more from other units perished; I’d seen their corpses all over the battlefield. 2nd Lieut. Jimmy McGrigor was killed when a shell hit Hugo Column HQ. He was all right, Jimmy. He talked to us like people, not layabouts.
The siege of Tobruk was lifted but that didn’t stop Rommel. He attacked again, advanced deep into Egypt and wasn’t stopped until the following summer when he reached El Alamein just a day or two’s march from Alexandria. There, the 8th Army, by then under Montgomery, turned the tables for the last time, pushing Rommel out of Egypt once and for all, pressing on through Libya and into Tunisia. Charles Calistan played a heroic part at El Alamein, destroying a score of German tanks almost single-handedly, but by then I was in another world entirely.
The German stretcher-bearers brought me to an advanced dressing station where I was placed on a metal table. They removed my bloodstained jerkin. A Stabsarzt came, a surgeon with the rank of major. I felt his hands all over my body as he checked for further injuries. I lay staring at the heavy canvas roof of the bell tent. There was an interruption as they brought in an Italian officer with his foot blown off. To my astonishment, the Stabsarzt ordered them sharply out of the tent so he could concentrate on me. It was a strange feeling, given that I was now a helpless prisoner dependent on an enemy doctor. He dug at my wounds to get the filth and shrapnel out of them and I was bandaged up. Thankfully, the bullet had missed the bone. I was mightily relieved.
I wasn’t scared. I remember thinking how the hell had I allowed myself to be caught and that now I would never get to be an officer. I was moved to a bigger tent with boxes of supplies piled in the corner. It was strange being undercover again. You didn’t see many tents in the desert; we always slept al fresco.
‘Would you like to eat something?’ The words took me by surprise. The speaker was a young lad with sun-bleached hair. The Afrika Korps had many educated people in its ranks and quite a lot spoke English. I hadn’t eaten properly for days. The answer was obvious. He came back carrying some bread and jam or ‘Marmelade’ as he called it. I was astounded. I hadn’t seen bread since South Africa.
It was then I realised I was going to survive this. I was well looked after in a silent and dispassionate sort of way. I assumed good treatment was the order of the day. Later, when I encountered a different sort of German soldier, I realised the Afrika Korps were in a league of their own.
They told me my war was over but I knew it wasn’t. I was still on duty and I would stay on duty until the end. It was a promise I made to myself then and it was to my own detriment later. Still, they had patched me up and probably saved my life so it was an oddly calm interlude. There was no guard inside the tent at night; the medical staff had no fear of me at all, they knew I wasn’t capable of escape. I don’t know how long it was before I was moved but eventually I was loaded, still lying down, into the back of a small vehicle. There was another wounded soldier in there with me but he barely spoke.
It was a long and painful journey. The roads were rough and I was struggling to breathe in the back. I tried to remember the odd bits of German I had learnt at school. After a while I managed to raise myself up and bash on the back
of the cab. There was no response. We needed air. ‘Luft, Luft,’ I called out, thumping the metalwork again.
The truck stopped. I heard the driver coming round to the back. The doors opened and he shouted something I didn’t understand. The engine fired and we set off again with the door pinned back. It was very dusty but it was better than suffocating. That journey must have been more than 300 miles. We stopped several times, maybe even overnight, I don’t remember. At Benghazi I was taken to a large hospital building and put in an iron bed at the end of a long, clean ward with tall windows. I was the only allied soldier in my section, kept away from the Italian and German wounded at the other end.
The female nurses were German and Italian and they only spoke to me when they had to. They’d arrive with a clean dressing on a tray, instruct me to move this way and that, do the job and then leave. I slept a lot. Slowly I was getting stronger and the first cooked food in ages was welcome.
I still had my leather jerkin. It was badly cut up by the blast but I managed to get the worst of the gore off it and the rest dried into a permanent stain. I couldn’t wear it without being reminded of Les.
Then I was moved quickly and without much explanation. The British were advancing on Benghazi and the Germans didn’t want to give back any prisoners, wounded or not. I was driven to the harbour in the back of a truck. Scores of other allied prisoners, perhaps a hundred or more, were waiting to be loaded on board a battered cargo boat. I couldn’t say how many were already down below. Wooden packing cases were piled on the decks. We were bound for Italy and there was no chance to escape. We were led up a gangway at the stern and down into a hold. I hadn’t had contact with any allied prisoners since my capture but I folded up my jerkin as a pillow, collapsed against the bulkhead and kept myself to myself. It was pretty cramped and the air was hot and foul with human filth. Soon after setting sail we were given our rations, an enormous dog biscuit perhaps eight inches square, so hard you couldn’t break it with your teeth. It was the only food we would get.
After some time, the steady throb of the engines and a swaying sensation told me we were moving and by now the fetid air was barely breathable. We began to holler, ‘Luft, Luft, Luft’, our hands cupping our mouths megaphone-style. It became a raucous, desperate game and everyone joined in. We were hoarse with shouting when part of the hatch was opened. We gulped in fresh sea air, filling our lungs as if oxygen had been rationed and then settled down to endure the rest of the voyage, sitting and sleeping on the same patch of hard steel as the hours passed.
We were there through one whole night and most of the next day. The dog biscuit didn’t get any more appetising. I looked up through the gap in the hatch covering and saw we were heading towards evening. The light above was sharper and more intense as the sun dropped in the sky.
I don’t remember any warning. There was a crushing blast from the forward section of the vessel. It lurched violently in the water as if buffeted by a huge wave. Another explosion followed. I knew it was serious.
The panic began almost immediately. Men turned and headed for the narrow metal stairways up to the deck. I saw guards with guns blocking their way as they fought to get up. It was a dreadful scene. There was no order or discipline; people didn’t help each other. They fought to save themselves alone. It was ugly but I would have to do the same.
I could still see the sky. A thin rope that had secured one corner of the tarpaulin over the hatch was now hanging down into the hold. I grabbed it and found it was firmly attached to something above. Despite the wound in my arm I began pulling myself up, hand over hand, with the rope twisted between my feet to ease the pressure. It was something I had done countless times as a child. I reached the end of the rope and gripped the hanging corner of the tarpaulin itself, shinning up that until I reached the rim and swung my legs over the edge of the hatch. The ship was in trouble and down at the bow. I never thought about it for a second. The sea was not too rough so I tore my boots off and dived straight in. With the muffled sound of water fizzing and popping in my ears, time slowed for an instant. I knew there were many men still trapped in that hold; I knew they might never get out and those closer to the blast would be dead already.
I surfaced though a layer of thick oil that stuck to my face and hair as I came up. I didn’t want that filth in my lungs. It was dark, heavy stuff and it felt like it would drag me to the bottom. It could only be a matter of time before the ship went down with all those still trapped inside. I knew I had to swim away from it to avoid being sucked under so I kicked hard and managed a crawl through the oil.
More danger. There were other men in the water now, some flailing helplessly. A fast boat, like a small destroyer, was in amongst us almost immediately. It was an Italian subchaser and it hadn’t come to help. I knew then that the explosions were tin fish, not mines; we’d been torpedoed by an allied submarine, which was still down there below my legs. The subchaser was scything through the survivors in huge arcs, whipping back and forth trying to find the sub below. It towered above us like a cliff of grey steel. There was panic in the water.
I heard Italian and German voices calling out but anyone caught in the path of the subchaser was mangled in its props or overwhelmed by the wash. Then it began to drop its depth charges. First there was a silence then from far below, a muffled thud, which felt like a hammer blow to the chest. It burst to the surface in a blast that sent a column of water high into the air and turned the sea around it white. I was a hundred yards away and it slammed my whole body. There was another blast, then several more until after a final pass the subchaser was receding on the skyline.
We were alone. The light was fading fast. From water level, the stricken vessel was nowhere to be seen. She had been perilously low in the water and some of the deck cargo had been blown off into the sea. I always assumed she went down.
I saw a large wooden packing case floating in the water and swam for it, churning through the oil. It seemed to take for ever and when I got there, there were several Italians already clinging to it. Through a hole in one corner I could see the case was empty. I got my breath back. This creaking box would be the only life raft we had. I knew something had to be done or I would die in the Mediterranean winter water. I struggled to get a grip on the slippery timbers and after falling back several times I heaved myself up on top, fully out of the water. I didn’t fight anyone to do it but had anyone tried to pull me off I would have fought them. If you are really resolved you can do these things but it took an enormous effort and I was clapped out when I got there. I collapsed and lay on my stomach.
I saw then that the case was fragile and might not hold together long in the waves which were now beginning to whip up. The others were just too weak to pull themselves out. I didn’t think of helping any of them. To offer a hand would have risked being pulled in. I had to think of number one. Without number one there was nothing. The sea remained choppy. They slipped off silently one by one. They were there and then they were gone. That’s how it was.
As the sun dipped below the sea, the waves settled. There was no land in sight and the warmth in my body was draining away. It was soon dark and I was under the sky once again with the light of the stars amidst a lonely soundscape of waves, wind, and creaking timbers.
I held on through that long cold night in the hope of rescue but the sea was empty. I slid in and out of consciousness as I lay on my belly. As the sun came up I fancied I saw land, a golden city on a hill. It could have been the sun on stone buildings; it could have been an hallucination. Time passed and I drifted briefly into consciousness again and this time there really was land in sight, startlingly close. Waves were rolling onto the rocks at the base of a light coloured headland. It brought little comfort. Even that distance was too much to swim.
When I became fully conscious again I was trapped between two pillars of rock and just clear of the water. I was alive and the embrace of the solid rock was welcome after the swaying and groaning of the timbers in the waves. I was sti
ll covered in oil.
I could hear the gentle rhythm of the waves and I was convinced the earth below me was rising and settling with the swell. My throat was parched, my lips had the scratch and taste of salt, oil and filth. It was some time before any strength returned and I tried to move.
I was on the edge of a rock-strewn cove. I got to my knees and tried to stand but my legs gave way the second I put any weight on them so I lay a while longer summoning the energy to try again. I must have been on that wooden container for about twenty hours. There had been just one night that I could remember, but with bouts of unconsciousness even that was vague.
When I was able to walk again, I found a landscape of scrubland and poor soil behind the cove, with hills beyond. The scattered trees would give me some cover but I had no strength in my limbs and my spirits were low. I started to think I would have to give myself up or starve. My bare feet had become soft with immersion in water. The stones hurt them.
I stumbled along until I came upon an old man working outside a small, wooden peasant hut. I didn’t stop to wonder whether he was friendly or not but went straight up to him and signalled for water. I had no choice. He hadn’t heard me approaching and he recoiled instantly when he saw me. I was soaking wet and had oil deep in the pores of my skin.
His face was lined and weathered but his tousled hair was dark and strong. He didn’t run but he kept his distance and looked behind me to see if I was alone. When he spoke it didn’t sound like Italian and that made me wonder. Perhaps this wasn’t Italy at all.
‘English, English,’ I said and crossed my wrists to suggest that I had been shackled. His expression eased but he kept his eyes on me and he never came closer. I pointed back along the track towards the sea, making wave-like gestures and an explosive sound mimicking a sinking ship. He stared back, silent and expressionless, then seemed to come to a decision. He mumbled something and gestured me towards the hut’s door. It was dark inside and he relaxed just a little when we were out of sight.
