Target Tobruk: Yeoman in the Western Desert

by Robert Jackson

  The order for him to move came quite unexpectedly at noon on 20 May. He had spent the morning helping to unload the last of some precious supplies from a freighter, and was taking a pause to wipe some of the sweat and dust from his face when Kemp came looking for him. Yeoman took one look at his friend’s expression, and knew at once that something was seriously wrong. Kemp drew him to one side, where they could not be overheard.

  ‘The balloon’s gone up in Crete.’ he explained. ‘The Jerries landed in the north-west part of the island early this morning. Gliders and paratroops, apparently.’

  ‘So old Pegleg was right, then,’ Yeoman said.

  ‘Yes,’ agreed Kemp, ‘and it looks as though the airfield at Maleme was the Germans’ main objective. God knows what’s happening over there, but your squadron has been ordered out as reinforcements and you’re to go with them. There’s a Lysander coming in after dark to pick you up.’ The lieutenant gave a sudden grin. ‘I’m going, too. There’s a Fleet Air Arm detachment in Crete, with Fairey Fulmars, and they’re short of pilots. Not much for me to do around here, anyway. So I’m to grab a Hurricane and fly out with your lot.’

  Yeoman smiled and clapped him on the shoulder. ‘That’s good news,’ he said. ‘I expect you’re looking forward to getting into the air again.’

  He turned away for a moment and looked at the scene around him; the chaotic harbour, with its half-submerged wrecks, many of them blasted again and again by high explosive even after they had gone down; the shattered white houses, with their crumbling walls and sagging roofs; the mounds of rubble where houses had once stood. He realized with a sudden shock that this dirty, ugly, worn-out, bomb-lashed town, with its stench and filth, its ragged human population and its hordes of voracious flying and crawling things, had become home. He felt an unaccountable sadness at the thought of leaving; then he shrugged it off and told himself that he was being a fool. All he was doing here now was vegetating. It was good to be on the move again; he didn’t think he would be back.

  As things were to turn out, he was wrong.

  *

  Three hundred miles north of Tobruk, a dense cloud of dust rose to a height of three thousand feet over the sandy airstrip at Argos, in the Peloponnese. It was caused by two squadrons of Junkers 87 Stukas, taking off to attack British positions near Canea, on the island of Crete.

  First Lieutenant Joachim Richter came out of the operations tent and watched them go, blowing his nose on a grimy handkerchief in a vain attempt to clear it of the clinging dust. Water wagons had been out all night, spraying the strip, but it had made no difference. It was the same story on every airfield occupied by the Luftwaffe in southern Greece, except for the one or two such as Eleusis, near Athens, which had metalled runways.

  Richter walked over to a nearby water tank to get himself a drink. He limped slightly, and doctors had told him that he would probably do so for the rest of his life. He drew himself a mug of brackish water and, as he sipped it, tried for the hundredth time to recall the events of that day in September 1940, when his life had very nearly come to an abrupt end. He remembered that he had been seconded to a bomber unit as fighter liaison officer, and that on the morning of Sunday, 15 September, he had taken off in a Junkers 88 piloted by a man called Schindler to take part in a big attack on London. After that, there was nothing. His mind was a complete blank. They told him that he had flown the shot-up Junkers back across the Channel, with its entire crew dead or dying, and that he had miraculously survived a fearsome crash with two broken legs, some burns and severe bruising.

  His only legacy of that day, after nearly six months in hospital and a recuperation centre for aircrew in the Black Forest, was a livid burn scar on his right cheek and his limp, which no longer troubled him. Feeling fit and ready for anything, he had reported back to his old unit, Fighter Wing 66, in time for the start of the campaign in Yugoslavia and Greece. And it was then that his real problems had started.

  While Richter was in hospital, Fighter Wing 66 had acquired a new medical officer, a young and pompous man whose main claim to fame, apparently, was that he had written a paper on the treatment of tropical diseases a year or two before the war. He was a stickler for regulations, and had flatly refused to authorize Richter as fit for operational flying. Richter’s commanding officer, Colonel Becker, had been sympathetic, but had pointed out that there was little he could do without the appropriate signature. In the meantime, he had appointed Richter operations officer, and had made him promise not to slit the MO’s throat with his own scalpel, as he had made dire threats to do.

  So, throughout the entire Greek campaign, Joachim Richter had stuck little flags into maps, had drafted operational orders and helped to brief his fellow fighter pilots, afterwards suffering the frustration of watching them go into action day after day and, worse, of hearing the tales of their victories when they returned. The Wing was in action now, out there over Crete, and all he could do was stay behind and kick his heels, fuming with impotent rage, while they made history.

  Richter rubbed a hand wearily over his eyes. There had been no sleep for him the previous night; everyone’s nerves had been on edge, and a lot of last-minute preparations had to be made before Operation Mercury, the assault on Crete, could be carried out on schedule.

  Richter, and many of his colleagues, had grave misgivings about the whole enterprise. It was originally to have taken place in the middle of May but had already been postponed twice, mainly on account of unserviceable airfields and a grave shortage of fuel for the armada of transport aircraft. Nearly five hundred Junkers 52 transports had been assembled for the operation, and to carry out their task each would have to make three sorties, requiring 650,000 gallons of fuel. The problem was that the tanker bringing the vital fuel to Greece had been held up by a blown bridge in the Corinth Canal, and had not begun to discharge its cargo at Piraeus, the port of Athens, until 18 May. Even then, teams of sweating Wehrmacht soldiers had laboured for twenty-four hours to pump the fuel into 45-gallon barrels, which then had to be transported over inadequate roads to the airstrips.

  Richter himself had seen how German paratroops, who should have been resting before the gruelling operation, had been roused in the middle of the night to help refuel the transports, working laboriously with handpumps. Some of the aircraft still remained unrefuelled at first light, and Richter had wondered if the situation was any better on the airstrips where most of the Junkers 52 groups were concentrated: Topolia, Megara, Dadion and Corinth. He doubted it.

  Nevertheless, soon after seven o’clock on that morning of 20 May, the sky over the Peloponnese had been filled with the thunder of engines as wave after wave of bombers — Dornier 17s, Heinkel 111s and Stukas — set out to soften up the British defences on Crete. An hour later it had been the turn of the fighters, the Messerschmitt 109s of JG 66 — Richter’s own unit — and JG 77, together with the twin-engined Messerschmitt 110s of ZG 26. The whole might of the Luftwaffe’s effort had been concentrated on a single point: the village of Maleme, its adjacent airfield and the hill which commanded the approaches.

  The fighter pilots had been jubilant on their return. Richter had stood to one side, smiling despite his inner feelings of bitter frustration, as they told the Wing intelligence officer how they had swept over the airfield, destroying several enemy machines, and shot up anti-aircraft positions in the vicinity. On their way back, they had passed the armada of Junkers 52s, many of them towing gliders, en route for Maleme.

  Richter hung the tin mug on a nail that protruded from the side of the wooden trailer on which the water tank stood and glanced at his watch. It was ninety minutes since the Wing had set out on its second sortie of the day; the Messerschmitts would soon be returning. He walked away from the cluster of drab tents, nodding to some mechanics who were working on the stripped-down engine of a Messerschmitt, and climbed a small rise a hundred yards or so away. From this vantage point he could look over the still waters of Argolikos Bay, the broad, V-shaped inlet that b
it like a spearhead into the Peloponnese, with the island of Spetsai standing like a sentinel at its distant mouth. A hundred and sixty miles away, beyond the haze that lay like a blue band along the southern horizon, lay Crete.

  The sun was approaching its zenith and it was very hot. Richter removed his peaked cloth cap and wiped the sweat from his forehead. Across the airstrip, heat danced in spirals over the ground.

  His experience as a pilot had taught him the trick of relaxing his eyes in searching the sky and he picked up the homecoming fighters while they were still no more than a cluster of tiny specks far out to sea. They were flying in sections of four, that seemingly loose and fluid, yet highly effective combat formation used by the Luftwaffe since before the outbreak of war. Richter smiled to himself; even the Tommies were using the Luftwaffe’s tactics now, after they had learned the hard way that the tight, unwieldy formations they had used all through the Battle of the Island did little but cost lives.

  He counted the Messerschmitts as they drew nearer, the sound of their engines swelling to the drumming thunder that was the music Richter loved so well. Ten … twenty … twenty-eight. With two aircraft unserviceable on the ground, that meant that both squadrons were back safely. The Wing’s third squadron, 111/JG 66, had been detached to Megara to protect the airfields near Athens from possible attack by RAF bombers.

  The Messerschmitts howled over the airfield, the sections in line astern, and broke away in pairs to land. Richter walked down to meet the leading aircraft, Colonel Becker’s, as it taxied in, trailing the inevitable cloud of dust. Becker switched off the engine, pushed open the hinged cockpit canopy and climbed out stiffly, jumping down from the wing. Richter saluted briefly, noting that his superior’s face was far from happy. He asked how the invasion was progressing. Becker shook his head slowly.

  ‘Not too well,’ he said. ‘Not too well at all. At least, that’s the impression one gets. There wasn’t much coastal flak, which means that our assault units must have overrun many of the enemy’s gun positions. It’s just as well, for the Ju 52s would have been easy meat. They made their drop from 150 metres, and they dropped inland from Ma-leme to avoid the risk of the paratroops drifting out to sea. We saw dozens of men going down into the hills. I did a low run over the area after the last wave dropped, and drew MG fire from all sides. Those damned hills are stiff with Tommies. I have a nasty feeling the whole business is turning into a shambles.’ He lit a cigarette and inhaled deeply. Richter saw that his hand trembled slightly.

  ‘What about the gliders?’ he asked.

  Becker let a long stream of smoke drift from his nostrils before answering. ‘They’re all over the place, too,’ he said. ‘The pilots must have had the sun right in their eyes and there was a lot of smoke drifting about from our air attacks. They can’t have been able to see a thing until the last moment. I spotted some gliders down in a valley a long way from Maleme, and they seemed to be pretty badly smashed up.’ He threw down his cigarette and ground it underfoot.

  ‘I wouldn’t be surprised,’ he went on, ‘if the airborne boys suffered a third or more casualties before they even got into action.’ His tone was bitter. ‘The Tommies were wide awake and waiting for us. I talked to some of the para officers before they left this morning, and they’d been told that they could expect little or no opposition. Some bastard ought to be strung up.’

  Richter tactfully kept quiet. Colonel Becker’s rages were nothing new to him, and they were usually directed against those responsible for planning the conduct of the war, or, as the colonel referred to them, ‘those spread-arsed sods covered in red stripes.’ But it didn’t do for a young lieutenant to agree openly. One of these days, Richter thought, Becker’s going to land himself in deep trouble. He would be sorry to see it happen, and quietly resolved to do everything in his power to prevent it, for Fighter Wing 66’s commander was a first-rate pilot who was much admired and respected by those under him.

  He excused himself, saying that he had more operational orders to draft and some reports to write. It was stuffy in the operations tent so he decided to do the job outside, spreading the paperwork on the top of an upturned packing case. He didn’t in the least mind writing reports, especially when they were summaries of pilots’ individual combat reports, but he found it hard to concentrate with all the noise going on around him. Vehicles were moving back and forth, distributing drums of fuel and full magazines of 20-mm cannon shells and 7.92-mm MGl7 ammunition to the Wing’s perspiring ground crews, who were labouring to get the Messerschmitts ready for the next sortie.

  After fifteen minutes the background noises won the battle with Richter’s concentration and he gave up in disgust, gathering up his paperwork and rising to go to the mess tent, where most of the pilots who had recently returned were making short work of their lunch. Suddenly, a few steps away from his makeshift desk, Richter stopped and turned, peering towards the bay, as he caught the faint sound of aero-engines. Even before he saw the aircraft, his ears, keenly tuned to the noise made by different types of engine, warned him of impending danger.

  Two aircraft were racing in low over the bay, the sun glittering on their glazed noses. At first sight they looked like Junkers 88s, but their twin engines were centrally-mounted, not underslung, and Richter quickly identified them as Bristol Blenheims. He began to run towards the mechanics who were working on the parked Messer-schmitts, waving his arms and shouting. They looked at him, startled; a proper alert system had not yet been organized. Then a four-barrelled 20-mm anti-aircraft gun on the airfield’s southern perimeter opened up with a staccato banging and the men scattered in all directions, seeking whatever cover was available.

  Richter threw himself under a nearby Volkswagen Kfz-1 light reconnaissance vehicle and put his hands over his head as the roar of the Blenheims’ engines swelled across the airfield, mingling with the bark of anti-aircraft weapons and the stammer of machine-guns as the whole of the defences finally went into action. A few moments later, Richter was knocked almost senseless by a series of huge explosions. A blast wave caught the Volkswagen and turned it over completely, leaving him exposed. Dirt cascaded round him and something struck him a painful blow on the back. Dazed and shocked, he struggled to his knees and peered through the curtain of dust and smoke that hung over the airfield. Some distance away, a Messerschmitt lay collapsed in a lake of burning fuel. Soot-blackened mechanics were hurriedly pushing two more fighters clear of the danger area. Beyond them, a boiling column of black smoke, shot with red flame, rose from a pile of tangled wreckage. Richter made out an RAF roundel, stamped on a piece of fragmented wing.

  The roar of engines registered on his dulled senses once more, causing him to look up. The surviving Blenheim had turned and was coming in low from the opposite direction, weaving slightly through a sky filled with strings of shell-bursts. Its pilot opened fire with his single forward-firing Vickers machine-gun. Richter stood rooted to the spot. It was as though the Blenheim was boring directly towards him. He felt an overwhelming admiration for the courage of the unknown pilot; one of the Blenheim’s engines was already in flames and Richter could imagine the man’s agony as he fought to keep the stricken machine in the air. Yet still he fought back.

  A few feet away, bullets spattered the overturned Volkswagen, making a loud clanging noise, breaking the spell abruptly. For a second time Richter threw himself prone, clawing at the ground, as the great dark shadow of the Blenheim passed a few feet above him. Something spattered the ground around him and he cringed involuntarily, but the substance was nothing more deadly than oil.

  The Blenheim flew away towards the south, the smoke from its burning engine spreading out in its wake. Richter saw it struggle to gain height, and fail. A moment later, its nose went down and it plunged into the shallow inshore waters of Argolikos Bay.

  Richter became conscious of shouts and screams, the hiss of flames and the crackle of exploding ammunition. He looked around. Two Messerschmitts were burning fiercely, but the remainder seem
ed to be more or less intact. There was a lot of activity around the mess tent, which had been raked by the Blenheim’s bullets. He could see bodies sprawled nearby and ran over to see if he could help, his head still ringing from the explosions. Through the drifting smoke he made out the large bulk of Colonel Becker. Blood was running down the CO’s face from a two-inch cut in his scalp as he moved among the carnage, issuing rapid orders. He seized Richter’s arm and stared at the pilot through haggard eyes.

  ‘Richter! Man, thank God you’re all right, at least!’ Becker choked. ‘Four pilots — I’ve lost four pilots! A senseless, bloody waste!’

  He pulled himself together with a visible effort. ‘Get hold of every spare man you can find and let’s get this shambles cleared up,’ he ordered. ‘I want a full damage report in fifteen minutes. And, Richter!’

  The pilot stopped in the act of turning away. ‘Yes, sir?’ he said.

  Becker looked hard at him for a moment. Then he said: ‘Doctor or no doctor, you can consider yourself fit for flying as of this moment. I’ll take full responsibility. Anyway, where is the bloody doctor?’

  They found him a few minutes later. He was lying face down in the officers’ latrine, with a British .303 bullet through his spine. Richter tried hard to feel sorry for the man, but was completely unable to do so. The German armed forces, he said to himself, were becoming top-heavy with pompous asses. Sooner or later they would take over the system altogether, and then nobody would have a chance.

  Chapter Seven

  At first, it was nothing more than a thin dark line, emerging slowly from the northern horizon. Gradually, it expanded into a black, rocky spine of land, taking on the appearance of a prehistoric sea monster basking against the blue background of sea and sky.