by Jon E. Lewis
Still not able to believe the evidence of his own eyes, the Colonel warned, “. . . Don’t make a move. This may be a trap. Wait and see what happens. Off.”
But it was no trap. Italians of all shapes and sizes, all ranks, all regiments and all services swarmed out to be taken prisoner. I felt that nothing would ever surprise me again after my loader suddenly shouted: “Look, sir, there’s a couple of bints there coming towards us. Can I go an’ grab ’em, sir? I could do with a bit of home comforts.” We took the two girls captive, installed them in a vehicle of their own and kept them for a few days to do our cooking and washing. I refrained from asking what other duties were required of the women, but noted that they remained contented and cheerful.
Out of the first confusion, order was slowly restored. Each squadron was given a part of the battlefield where we were to collect the prisoners and equipment and to keep careful tally of the captures. It was a novel but exhausting task, and Kinnaird, anxious to be done with it as soon as possible, pushed and harried us to clear our portion of the area.
The battlefield was an amazing sight. It was strewn with broken and abandoned equipment, tattered uniforms, piles of empty shell and cartridge cases. It was littered with paper, rifles and bedding. Here and there small groups of men tended the wounded who had been gathered together. Others were collecting and burying the dead. Still others, less eager to surrender than the majority, stood or lay waiting to be captured. Some equipment was still burning furiously, more was smouldering. There were many oil and petrol fires emitting clouds of black smoke.
There were few incidents. Soon the generals and the high-ranking officers had been discovered and taken away. The remaining officers were piled unceremoniously into Italian lorries and driven off. The thousands of men were formed into long columns guarded at head and tail by only one or two of our impassive, imperturbable and perpetually cheerful soldiers, who shouldered the unaccustomed new duties with the same confident assurance with which they had met and mastered all the other trials of the campaign.
It was the work of some days to clear the battlefield of all that was worth salvaging and to muster and despatch on their long march to the prison camps in Egypt the thousands of prisoners.
ENTER ROMMEL, FEBRUARY–JULY 1941
Leutnant Heinz Werner Schmidt, Afrika Korps
Born in 1891, Rommel first distinguished himself in World War I, winning a Pour le Merite. An early Nazi sympathiser, he commanded the Fuhrer’s escort battalion during the Austrian, Sudetenland and Czech occupations and the Polish campaign. During the invasion of France, he commanded the 7th Panzer Division to such great distinction that he earned himself promotion to commander of the Afrika Korps. Although he only arrived in North Africa on 12 February 1941, and knew nothing of desert warfare, he was a born master of mobile operations – so garnering the nickname “The Desert Fox” by an admiring enemy – and by 24 March was on the offensive. After unceremoniously ejecting the British from Beda Fomm he went eastwards at lightning speed and by 11 April was almost at the start line of O’Connor’s December 1940 offensive.
We went for the little fort in the desert, and the British positions round it, from three directions. The engagement was sharp but lasted only a couple of hours. We took the British commander, Major-General Gambier-Parry, in his tent. The haul of prisoners numbered almost three thousand. We had a further spectacular success. A mobile force of motor-cyclists caught up with the British column moving eastward across the desert below the Jebel Akhdar nearby, and to their astonishment held up the two heroes of the British advance to Benghazi: Lieutenant-General Sir Richard O’Connor, who had just been knighted for his successes against the Italians, and Lieutenant-General Sir Philip Neame, V.G. So we had three generals in the bag.
Mechili landing-ground was littered with destroyed planes. British machines swooped down to attack it afresh at short intervals. At the height of one assault, “my” Fieseler Storch dropped in out of the sky. Out stepped Rommel, smiling buoyantly, fresh from a personal reconnaissance of the desert scene.
The command trucks of the captured British generals stood on a slight rise. They were large, angular vehicles on caterpillar tracks, equipped inside with wireless and facilities for “paper” work. We christened them “Mammoths” then, but I did not realize that these useful trucks would be used by Rommel and his staff and commanders right through the long struggle that was now beginning in the desert.
Rommel inspected the vehicles with absorbed interest after a brief interview with the captured British generals. He watched them emptied of their British gear. Among the stuff turned out he spotted a pair of large sun-and-sand goggles. He took a fancy to them. He grinned, and said, “Booty – permissible, I take it, even for a General.” He adjusted the goggles over the gold-braided rim of his cap peak.
Those goggles for ever after were to be the distinguishing insignia of the “Desert Fox”.
General Erwin Rommel, Afrika Korps
Rommel writes to his wife.
3 April 1941
DEAREST LU, – We’ve been attacking since the 31st with dazzling success. There’ll be consternation amongst our masters in Tripoli and Rome, perhaps in Berlin too. I took the risk against all orders and instructions because the opportunity seemed favourable. No doubt it will all be pronounced good later and they’ll say they’d have done exactly the same in my place. We’ve already reached our first objective, which we weren’t supposed to get until the end of May. The British are falling over each other to get away. Our casualties small. Booty can’t yet be estimated. You will understand that I can’t sleep for happiness.
Brigadier James Hargest, 5th New Zealand Infantry Brigade
Hargest was captured at Sidi Azis in July.
There was a little stir among the Germans and another appeared. It was Rommel. He sent for me. I bowed to him. He stood looking at me coldly. Through an interpreter he expressed his displeasure that I had not saluted him. I replied that I intended no discourtesy, but was in the habit of saluting only my seniors in our own or allied armies. I was in the wrong, of course, but had to stick to my point. It did not prevent him from congratulating me on the fighting quality of my men.
“They fight well,” he said.
“Yes, they fight well,” I replied, “but your tanks were too powerful for us.”
“But you also have tanks.”
“Yes, but not here, as you can see.”
“Perhaps my men are superior to yours.”
“You know that is not correct.”
Although he had been fighting for over a week and was travelling in a tank, he was neat and clean, and I noticed that he had shaved before entering the battle that morning.
A TANK IS “BREWED-UP”, LIBYA, 15 JUNE 1941
Cyril Joly, 7th Armoured Division
“Driver, halt,” I ordered. “Gunner, 2-pounder – traverse left – on – tank – German Mark III – eight five zero yards. Fire.” I watched Basset carefully turn the range-drum to the right range, saw him turn to his telescope and aim, noticed out of the corner of my eye that King was ready with the next round, and then the tank jolted slightly with the shock of the gun firing. Through the smoke and dust and the spurt of flame I watched intently through my binoculars the trace of the shot in flight. It curved upwards slightly and almost slowly, and then seemed to plunge swiftly towards the target. There was the unmistakable dull glow of a strike of steel on steel. “Hit, Basset! Good shot! Fire again,” I called. Another shot and another hit, and I called, “Good shot; but the bastard won’t brew.”
As I spoke I saw the flame and smoke from the German’s gun, which showed that he was at last answering. In the next instant all was chaos. There was a clang of steel on the turret front and a blast of flame and smoke from the same place, which seemed to spread into the turret, where it was followed by another dull explosion. The shock-wave which followed swept past me, still standing in the cupola, singed my hands and face and left me breathless and dazed. I looked do
wn into the turret. It was a shambles. The shot had penetrated the front of the turret just in front of King, the loader. It had twisted the machine-gun out of its mounting. It, or a jagged piece of the torn turret, had then hit the round that King had been holding ready – had set it on fire. The explosion had wrecked the wireless, torn King’s head and shoulders from the rest of his body and started a fire among the machine-gun boxes stowed on the floor. Smoke and the acrid fumes of cordite filled the turret. On the floor, licking menacingly near the main ammunition stowage bin, there were innumerable small tongues of flame. If these caught on, the charge in the rounds would explode, taking the turret and all in it with it.
I felt too dazed to move. My limbs seemed to be anchored, and I wondered vaguely how long I had been-standing there and what I ought to do next. It was a miracle that the explosion had left me unharmed, though shaken. I wondered what had happened to Basset and bent into the cupola to find out. Shielded behind the gun and the recoil guard-shield, Basset, too, had escaped the main force of the explosion. The face that turned to look at me was blackened and scorched and the eyes, peering at me from the black background, seemed to be unnaturally large and startlingly terrified. For once Basset’s good humour had deserted him, and the voice which I heard was shaking with emotion.
“Let’s get out of ’ere, sir. Not much we can do for King, poor bastard! – ’e’s ’ad it and some. An’ if we ’ang around we’ll catch a packet too. For Gawd’s sake let’s—off quick.”
At last I awoke from my daze. “O.K., Basset. Tell Newman to bale out, and be bloody quick about it.”
As Basset bent to shout at the driver the tank was struck again, but this time on the front of the hull. When the smoke and dust cleared, Basset bent again to shout at Newman. A moment later he turned a face now sickened with horror and disgust and blurted out:
“ ’E’s ad it too, sir. It’s took ’alf ’is chest away. For—’s sake let’s get out of ’ere.” In a frenzy of panic he tried to climb out of the narrow cupola past me, causing me to slip and delaying us both. Through my mind there flashed the thought that the German would still continue to fire until he knew that the tank was knocked out, and as yet no flames would be visible from the outside. Inside the turret there was now an inferno of fire.
Without knowing how I covered the intervening distance, I found myself lying in a small hollow some twenty yards from my stricken tank, watching the first thin tongues of flame and black smoke emerging from the turret top.
ONE MAN’S WAR: DESERT WEARINESS, OCTOBER 1941
Private R.L. Crimp, 7th Armoured Division
18 October 1941. Just lately I’ve been feeling a bit browned off. There’s a sort of psychological complaint some chaps get after long exposure on the Blue called “desert weariness”, though I can hardly claim to have reached that yet. But for months now we’ve been cut off from nearly every aspect of civilized life, and every day has been cast in the same monotonous mould. The desert, omnipresent, so saturates consciousness that it makes the mind as sterile as itself. It’s only now that you realize how much you normally live through the senses. Here there’s nothing for them. Nothing in the landscape to rest or distract the eye; nothing to hear but roaring truck engines; and nothing to smell but carbon exhaust fumes and the reek of petrol. Even food tastes insipid, because of the heat, which stultifies appetite. The sexual urge, with nothing to stir it, is completely dormant, and there’s nothing to encourage its sublimation except, perhaps, this crack-pot journal.
Then over and above the physical factors, there’s the total lack of change or relaxation; nothing really certain even to look forward to, that, after a term of such vacuum-living, would make it tolerable. In civvy-street, when day’s work is done, there’s always an hour or two watching Rita Hayworth, a couple of drinks at the “Spread Eagle”, a chair by the fire and a Queen’s Hall prom, or a weekend’s hike on the North Downs. Even in camp there’s Garrison Theatre, or Shafto’s Shambles, and the ubiquitous NAAFI. But here there’s no respite or getting away from it all. For weeks, more probably months, we shall have to go on bearing an unbroken succession of empty, ugly, insipid days. Perhaps, eventually, a chance will come of a few days’ leave in Cairo, but that’s too vague and remote to be worth setting tangible hopes upon. Anything might happen in the meantime. But the one thing that keeps the chaps going, that gives them a sort of dogged persistence in living through these interim days, is the thought of Home.
The immediate present effect, however, is extreme mental sluggishness, sheer physical apathy, and a vast aversion to exertion in every form. The most trivial actions, such as cleaning the sand off weapons, making a fire for a brew, or, when you’re lying down by the truck, moving position into the patch of shade that the surf has shifted, seem utterly not worthwhile and require a tremendous effort to perform. It all seems so futile.
Then, of course, there are the flies. Lord Almighty, that such pests should ever have been created! Bad enough in any climate, the Egyptian sort are militant in the extreme, almost a different type, imbued with a frenzied determination to settle on human flesh. This may be due to the aridity of the terrain and to the fact that the only moisture available is human sweat. Soon after sunrise they arrive in hordes from nowhere, then plague us with malign persistence all through the day, swarming and buzzing around, trying desperately to land on our faces, in our eyes, ears and nostrils, on our arms, hands, knees and necks. And once settled, they bite hard. Desert sores, oases of succulence, draw them like magnets. In fact everything unwholesome, filthy and putrefied is manna to them. That’s why we have to make our latrines completely sealed and burn out our refuse dumps with petrol daily. It’s the devil’s own job keeping our food from their clutches, and as soon as a meal’s on the plates they always get the first nibble. At the moment of writing this there are five crawling over my hands and I’m spitting as many again away from my mouth. You can whack them a hundred times, and still they’ll come back. It is a blessed relief at sunset, when, as at some secret signal, they all simultaneously disappear.
PANZER LIED: “HEISS UBER AFRIKAS BODEN”
A favourite song of the Afrika Korps tank divisions.
The sun is glowing hot over the African soil
Crossing the Schelde, the Meuse and the Rhine,
The tanks pushed into France,
Huzzars of the Führer dressed in black,
They have overrun France by assault.
Refrain:
The treads are rattling
The engine is droning
Tanks are advancing in Africa
Tanks are advancing in Africa
The sun is glowing hot over the African soil,
Our tank engines sing their song,
German tanks under the burning sun,
Stand in battle against England,
The treads are rattling, the engine is droning,
Tanks are advancing in Africa
Tanks of the Führer, British beware,
They are intended to annihilate you,
They don’t fear death or the devil,
On them the British arrogance breaks,
The treads are rattling, the engine is droning,
Tanks are advancing in Africa
The sun is glowing hot over the African soil,
Our tank engines sing their song,
German tanks under the burning sun,
Stand in battle against England,
The treads are rattling, the engine is droning,
Tanks are advancing in Africa
OPERATION CRUSADER: TANK BATTLE AT SIDI REZEGH, 28 NOVEMBER 1941
Captain Robert Crisp, 3rd Royal Tank Regiment, 4th Armoured Brigade
In November 1941 desert warfare reached a new pitch of intensity when the British Western Desert Force (newly rechristened the Eighth Army) went on the offensive against Rommel in Operation Crusader, not the least objective of which was the relief of Tobruk in Rommel’s rear, garrisoned by the 9th Australian Division. Crusader, wh
ich began on 18 November, dispatched 700 tanks against 400 German-Italian. Some of the fiercest tank fighting of the war ensued around the airfield at Sidi Rezegh, south of Tobruk.
As my Honey4 edged up to the final crest I was immediately aware of the dense throng of transport in front of me. The Trigh was black and broad and moving with packed trucks and lorries. Over it all hung a thick, drifting fog of dust so that only the nearest stream of vehicles was clearly discernable. There was not a panzer in sight. The tail of the enemy column was just on our right front, and it looked as though we could not have timed it better. The Germans gave no sign of having seen us, or of being aware of our tanks poised for the strike within a thousand yards of them. They moved slowly westwards wondering, no doubt, what the devil Rommel thought he was playing at with these mad rushes up and down the desert, and beefing like hell about the dust.
I looked approvingly to right and left, where the rest of the squadron were lined up following the curve of the contour. From each turret top poked the head and shoulders of the commander, eyes glued to binoculars trained on that enemy mass. It must have been quite a sight to somebody only a week out from base camp in England. I got on the air to the C.O. with a quick, formal announcement that “C” Squadron was in position and ready. From my left the other squadron did the same. Within a minute the reply came: “Hullo JAGO, JAGO calling. Attack now. Alec sends a special message ‘Go like hell and good luck’. Good luck from me too. JAGO to JAGO, off.”
The order went through all the intercoms, from commander to crew: “Driver, advance. Speed up. Gunner, load both guns.” The Honeys positively leapt over the top of the ridge and plunged down the steady incline to the Trigh. I knew my driver, who was getting used to this sort of thing, would have his foot hard down on the accelerator, straining his eyes through the narrow slit before him to avoid the sudden outcrops of rock or the slit trenches that littered this oft-contested terrain. On each side the Honeys were up level with me. That was good. My wrist-watch showed 1 o’clock as I gripped hard on the edge of the cupola and pressed back against the side to ride the bucking tank.
