But today, Steiner was out in force, with a half-dozen Italian armoured cars at his command. Fast, with heavy firepower and good armour, the Autoblindas would be more than a match for whatever the Desert Group carried with them.
Besides, the reports he'd read on the activities of this unit seemed to indicate they were largely reconnaissance troops, unwilling to engage in combat and untrained in small, mobile unit battle tactics. He was sure the men were brave enough, of course, but when the Autoblindas' 20mm cannons began to reduce the British vehicles to burning, twisted heaps of scrap metal, they'd capitulate.
It would be, Steiner reasoned, the only civilized thing to do.
Up ahead, the dust plume and distant speck that was the Desert Group's scout car was getting closer: they were slowly but surely catching up to them. Further in the distance, the haze of dust in the air signalled the location of the rest of the patrol. Steiner wondered if the scout car carried a radio: if so, they must have contacted the rest of their patrol and warned them of Steiner's approaching armoured car squadron. Would the patrol even attempt a fight? Or would they immediately flee, perhaps breaking formation and dispersing, so no matter who his squadron followed, they'd only catch part of the patrol? His mind raced with all the possible permutations of the battle to come. It was about time, too. Although he didn't regret capturing Lieutenant Lewis and his men without a fight, the truth was that most of Steiner's time in the desert involved a great deal of boredom. There was so much distance involved, and such small units moving about the desert, that finding the enemy was all too often simply blind luck. Today, they'd been searching for evidence of a Desert Group patrol either coming from or going to their base in Siwa. Thankfully it appeared their luck was good, because only a couple of hours after crossing into Egypt, they’d seen the tell-tale dust plume of the scout car. Steiner had immediately whipped his Italians into a frenzy, hoping to close before being discovered.
Up ahead, it appeared the scout car was going to make a futile effort to lose them behind some low, rocky, sand dunes. The car disappeared, and pushing his officer's cap back and snapping his goggles up onto his forehead, Steiner raised his field glasses and scanned the dunes ahead. At first he saw nothing. Then there was a momentary flash of light as the sun struck something reflective along the ridge of the left-hand dune. Perhaps one of the Desert Group officers was sizing up Steiner’s force through field glasses? Steiner imagined the enemy commander calculating the chances of escaping a squadron of armoured cars equipped with autocannons and machine guns.
If you're still standing there right now, Steiner thought, it is already too late to run.
Steiner lowered his glasses and ducked down into the crew compartment. He turned to the gunner, who took Steiner’s place in the one-man turret to operate the Autoblinda’s weapons. “When we close to within five hundred meters, open fire on the ridge of the left-hand sand dune,” he ordered.
The gunner opened his mouth to reply, but before he spoke they both flinched as a dozen hammer-blows struck the car’s armour plate in rapid succession. The gunner ducked into the body of the car, fingering a bullet hole in the top of his cloth cap. Another half-dozen impacts rattled against the body of the car, and Steiner had to smile at the bravery of the Desert Group soldiers.
Brave, but ultimately futile, Steiner thought to himself. Rifles and light machine guns weren’t going to turn away a half-dozen armoured cars. He turned again to the gunner.
“Range to target?” he asked.
“Six hundred metres,” the Italian replied, peering through his sights.
“Open fire now, alternating weapons. They need to know what they’re up against,” Steiner ordered.
The gunner cut loose with a six-round barrage from the 20mm cannon, the whole armoured car shaking with the weapon’s recoil. Then he switched to the 8mm Breda machine gun and let off several long bursts, emptying one of the weapon’s magazines, before firing the rest of the cannon’s twelve-round ammunition clip. As the gunner reloaded his weapons, Steiner peered through his commander’s seat vision block. He saw the impacts of the cannon shells on the dune’s ridge, great puffs of sand and pulverized rock leaping into the air.
Steiner’s radio crackled. “Car Four to Car One - do we open fire?”
“All cars,” Steiner replied, “prepare to engage the enemy. Lay cover fire along the ridges. Once we are past the dunes, concentrate fire on the vehicles.”
Rifle and machine gun bullets continued to patter against the car’s hull, but the Autoblindas were effectively immune to small-arms fire. Steiner wondered at the insanity of men who should clearly understand that they couldn’t hope to damage the Italians’ armour. Only three hundred meters from the gap between the dunes, Steiner squinted through the vision block, searching for any sign of the enemy. He saw movement at the edge of the right-hand sand dune, and he peered through his field glasses, trying to see through the car’s restrictive viewport. Although the car’s bouncing and jostling made a clear view almost impossible, for just a moment, Steiner could see what attracted his attention, and his blood went cold.
“Evasive maneuvers!” he screamed to his driver. “Evasive man-”
The car’s turret rang like a gigantic bell, and Steiner felt himself get slapped with hot, wet clots of soft matter. His brain vaguely registered it as pulped human tissue. He glanced up and saw what remained of his gunner collapse back into the car. The Italian’s torso had effectively disappeared, ripped apart by the impact of an armour-piercing shell and fragments of the car’s own armour. There was a fist-sized hole in the turret a few inches below the gunner’s optics, and a matching hole in the rear wall of the turret.
Steiner keyed the radio. “All cars, all cars, we are taking anti-tank fire. Evasive manoeuvres!” he spoke as clearly as possible into the mouthpiece, trying to keep his emotions from distorting the orders and confusing the other car commanders.
There was another immense clang as a second shell struck the body of his armoured car, and Steiner felt a tug on his lower leg. Fear rushed through him; he’d heard numerous accounts from those who’d lost limbs and, at the time, only felt a “tug” as a shell or fragment severed their limb in the blink of an eye. Tentative fingers reached down, and to his relief only found a tear in his pant leg and a bloody crease across the side of his calf. But smoke began to seep forward from the engine compartment; the shell had continued through the body of the car and struck something vital in the engine block.
“We’re on fire!” the rear driver shouted, panic rising in his voice.
“Driver, stop the car,” Steiner ordered. “Everyone bail out!”
There was no way, Steiner told himself, he was going to burn to death inside an Italian armoured car out in the middle of the Libyan desert. As the car slewed to a halt, Steiner grabbed his rucksack, rifle, and map case, then bailed out of the side hatch, followed closely by the front and rear drivers. Outside of the vehicle, Steiner saw wisps of smoke rising out of the engine vents along upper deck of the car.
Bullets continued to ring against the hull, and although Steiner didn’t want to be anywhere near the burning corpse of his Autoblinda, there wasn’t really any other cover to be found. “Get as low as you can, and don’t make yourselves a target!” he warned his men.
Too late. The rear driver went flying backwards as if kicked by a horse, a fist-sized hole blown through his chest. The report of a powerful weapon reached their ears a moment later. Anti-tank rifle, Steiner’s brain registered. As he and the driver crouched against one of the Autoblinda’s wheel wells, Steiner watched as the remaining cars in his squadron charged on, guns blazing, into what he knew to be a very clever trap.
Chapter 16
Thirty Miles North-East Of Jerabub Oasis
October 30th, 1315 Hours
Lynch cycled the bolt of his weapon and shifted his body in the rocky sand along the reverse slope of the dune, trying to get comfortable. He peered through the dust kicked up by the muzzle blast and gave
a satisfied grunt when he saw the distant figure lying motionless on the ground. Sorry about that, boyo.
Lynch scooted back further from the edge of the ridgeline as cannon and machine gun fire from the Italian armoured cars raised small geysers of sand and rock all around him. Although only his head and the tops of his shoulders were silhouetted above the ridge line, he felt perilously exposed to the incoming fire. One hit from a twenty-millimetre cannon shell and there’d only be half of him left to bury out here in the desert.
The five remaining vehicles in the armoured car squadron were only two hundred yards away now, and over the roar of the Autoblindas’ weapons and the sounds of their own small arms, Lynch heard Eldred shout to the men, “Focus fire on the lead car!”
Lynch checked his sight picture, corrected slightly, and squeezed the trigger. The Boys anti-tank rifle fired with a spectacular report, raising a huge cloud of dust in front of him as the muzzle blast tore again at the forward slope of the dune. The rifle, all five feet and thirty-five pounds of it, slammed Lynch in the shoulder with sledgehammer force, and he grunted in pain from the impact. Lynch had wisely wadded up a pair of his thickest woolen socks and stuffed them into his shirt behind the Boys’ buttstock, but the recoil was still incredible. Lynch worked the weapon’s bolt, ejecting the still-smoking cartridge case, and fed another round into the chamber from the five-shot magazine on top of the rifle’s receiver.
Calling the Boys a “rifle” was almost a misnomer; it was practically a man-portable cannon, firing a massive .55 calibre armour-piercing bullet. The Boys had been deployed against the Germans in 1940, where the weapon proved to be bitterly ineffective against the armour of the German panzers. On this mission, their likely opponents wouldn’t be German and Italian tanks, but armoured cars. And, against those thinner-skinned vehicles, the Boys could lend a decisive advantage.
Which is why Eldred had brought six of them to North Africa.
As the dust cloud in front of Lynch dissipated, he saw his target was still on the move. Closer now, Lynch fired again, and not waiting for the dust to settle from the last shot, estimated his aim and fired a third time.
“Displace!” Herring shouted at him. Assigned as his loader, Herring helped Lynch lift the weapon and they slid down the side of the dune, then scrambled to the left ten yards before taking up another firing position. Lynch saw the car he’d been firing at had stalled out, smoke rising from the engine compartment as crew members bailed out from its hatches, armour-piercing rounds still hammering into the car's hull. Eldred had advocated concentration of fire, and so all the teams were ordered to fire on one target at a time until it was disabled. The crews of the Morris cars had unbolted the Boys rifles from their cars' turrets, and four Boys teams were assigned to each dune; three Commando teams, and a team from one of the armoured cars.
“Next target?” Lynch asked as he settled the rifle onto its bipod.
“Right there,” Herring pointed along Lynch’s sight picture, at an Autoblinda on the move, its 20mm cannon hammering away at where they’d been a few seconds ago. The ridgeline there was disintegrating under the punishing cannon fire.
Just as Herring pointed out his target, Lynch saw puffs of dust and paint flakes leap from the car’s hull, as other Commandos began to engage the armoured car. Their position put them slightly to the car’s flank, and Lynch sighted in on the vehicle’s engine compartment. He fired twice in rapid succession, thankful that he’d loaded a sixth bullet in the rifle’s chamber before the attack. His weapon dry, he and Herring lifted the heavy rifle again and ran towards another firing position, crouching low.
Lynch heard a scream of pain ahead of them, and he looked up to see a Commando from Peabody’s squad tumbling down the back of the dune, his uniform sheeted in blood from a huge, ghastly stomach wound. The Commando’s teammate was slumped over his weapon, most of his skull missing. The two men had caught a pair of cannon shells. Lynch and Herring glanced at each other and hunched even lower as they ran.
Settling into their new position, Herring stripped the empty magazine from the top of the Boys rifle and locked in a new load of five cartridges. Lynch looked at their previous target over his weapon sights, and saw that the armoured car was in reverse, backing up at high speed out of the killing zone while laying down covering fire with its 8mm Breda machine gun. Anti-tank fire from the other Boys rifles continued to strike the car, and Lynch fired all five rounds in the rifle’s magazine as fast as he could cycle the heavy bolt, but the shots were either ineffective, or not effective enough to kill the driver, gunner, or the car’s engine. Within a few seconds, the car had retreated, along with two others, out of effective range.
Lynch saw that two of the armoured cars remained within the kill zone, one of them burning fiercely, the other merely sitting still. As he watched, a rifle barrel emerged from the turret hatch of the second car, a white rag tied to the muzzle. Further away, where Lynch had scored his first kill, he saw the two surviving crew members break cover from behind their dead vehicle and climb aboard one of the three retreating cars before they continued their escape, sporadic bursts of cannon and machine gun fire ineffectually lashing the sand dunes and slicing through the air above the Commandos.
“All squads, cease fire!” Eldred shouted, his command repeated up and down the line by Price, McTeague, Donovan, and Peabody. Within seconds the Brens, Boys, and Lee-Enfields stopped firing.
Lynch looked up and down the Commando lines. Behind the other sand dune, he saw a Commando supported by another squadmate limping down the dune, probably with a bullet in his leg. To his left, another Commando was examining his wounded loader, the man’s head bleeding freely from a nasty graze. Lynch’s mind did the coldly analytical calculations all veterans learned to compute after a battle. Within a couple of minutes, eight Boys rifle teams and one 37mm anti-tank gun had killed three armoured cars and driven away three others, at a cost of two killed and two wounded. All in all, Lynch thought that was a cheap price to pay for their victory, given how easily it could have gone differently.
The three captains, Price, and the NCOs of each squad had discussed how to handle a situation such as this over the course of the last two days. Although the Boys rifles were dangerous to armoured cars at close range, the long distances involved in the desert meant that making such circumstances available to them would be difficult, to say the least. They’d need to lure the enemy into a kill zone where they could be shot up at close range from behind substantial cover, while at the same time not endangering the convoy’s vehicles.
In the end a few different scenarios were outlined, and thankfully, there was sufficient cover near at hand when Bowen’s scout car spotted the dust plume raised by the Italian armoured cars. Acting as bait, the scout car had approached close enough to give itself away, and when the enemy squadron tried to intercept, the scout car used a tried-and-true battle technique, the feigned retreat, to lure the Italians into a position of vulnerability. The long-ranged small arms fire was used at first to give the impression the LRDG patrol wasn’t armed with anything more effective, and only when the Autoblindas were at close range did the Chevrolet equipped with the portee-mounted 37mm anti-tank gun back out of its hiding place just enough to expose the gun and open fire. It had been a calculated risk, but one that apparently paid out a considerable dividend.
Lynch’s ears still rang from the Boys’ tremendous report, and he didn’t hear Bowen coming up the dune behind him. The wiry Commando sniper stood next to Lynch, his scoped rifle cradled in the crook of his arm, and looked out over the battlefield before them.
“Looks like you lot enjoyed yourselves, eh?” Bowen asked.
“So we did,” Lynch replied. “Although to be sure, shooting that bloody great rifle is anything but enjoyable.”
Bowen bent down and lifted the Boys rifle by its carrying handle, grunting with the effort. “I’m surprised it doesn’t come with a gun carriage.”
Herring, standing to the other side of Lynch, stared
out at the three wrecked Autoblindas. “Heavy or no, they pack quite the punch. Without them, those sodding Eyetie tin cans would have shot us to pieces and ground what’s left into the sand.”
The other two men followed Herring’s gaze. A half-dozen Commandos led by Sergeant Donovan walked out out towards the wrecks, weapons as the ready. They confirmed there were no survivors inside the burning car, but the second vehicle contained two living crew, who emerged with their hands raised, both men sheeted in gore from their dead comrades. While Donovan and several Commandos ransacked the wreck, a lance corporal escorted the two prisoners of war back to where Eldred, Price, Clarke, and Moody were debriefing their men. Having nothing else better to do, Lynch, Bowen, and Herring walked down the dune. Herring helped Lynch carry the heavy anti-tank rifle between them as their feet slipped and slid on the loose rock and sand. As they approached the officers and the prisoners, Lynch saw a crowd of men gathering around. Lynch heard Eldred talking to one of the Commandos, a trooper from Sergeant Peabody’s squad.
“I asked ‘em, Captain,” the Commando said to Eldred, gesturing towards the two Italians. “They’s not giving up anything other’n their names and that they’re, uh, ‘burr soggy Larry’, sounds like.”
“They’re Bersaglieri, Trooper,” Captain Clarke replied. “Crack Italian light infantry, some of the best soldiers in their army. They’re not going to give you anything.”
Captain Moody gave a grunt at that, and crossed his arms over his broad chest. He looked at the Italians through hooded eyes. “I think if we knock ‘em about a bit, these bastards will talk to us.”
Eldred shook his head. “Abercrombie and his knuckle-men are back in Mersa Matruh, and I’m not going to continue his bad habits out here in the desert. These men fought bravely and stand unbowed, even covered in the blood of dead men. No one is laying a rough hand on these prisoners, understood?”
Commando- The Complete World War II Action Collection Volume I Page 39