World War II: The Autobiography (22 page)

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 down 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, which 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 Honey
⁴
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.”