by Max Hennessy
‘It’s like Salisbury Plain with knobs on,’ Packer observed. ‘If the desert’s all like this it’s going to be a long war.’
The land rose and fell in ridges, hillocks and valleys that were full of stones and rocks. The lack of rain was clear in the absence of trees, woods, crops, villages, or towns. It was as if a giant hand had wiped the place clean. Then they began to notice boards showing where in the empty landscape the army was hidden. At this stage they mostly indicated lines of communications troops, ordnance depots, workshops, supply columns, engineers’ stores and dumps, but as they turned south, at the edge of a plateau where the coastal road swung west to Sidi Barrani, they began to reach the 7th Armoured Division, to which the 19th Lancers were attached, and finally found the regiment itself.
They were in a shallow valley that seemed about as near as you could get to hell without getting burned. Under the strident sun, the scenery was as stark as if it were on the moon, the sand stretching to the horizon to make the mind ache with its uncompromising harshness.
‘You’ve arrived just in time.’ Aubrey spat out grit and wrinkled his eyes against the blowing sand. ‘They’ve just changed the name of the Desert Force to the Eighth Army and given us a new general called Cunningham. It’s bound to mean something.’
‘The regiment was equipped with American-built Stuart tanks, known to everybody as Honeys.
‘At least they’re better than those half-baked A10s we had in Greece,’ Aubrey said. ‘Only about half a dozen were lost through enemy action. All the rest were abandoned with broken tracks or mechanical breakdowns. We didn’t bother to destroy them because they’ll be no good to the Germans either. Perhaps the Greeks use them to keep chickens in. They’d make good chicken houses.’
Aubrey had changed in the few months since Josh had seen him. His smile was the same easy-going, good-natured greeting Josh knew so well, but he was leaner, browner, even a little more alert. The mess was in a marquee and at once Josh saw a familiar face peering at him out of the past.
‘Syd Dodgin!’
Dodgin beamed. ‘Not only me,’ he said, jabbing at another figure alongside. ‘Jack Winder, too.’
‘We got commissioned a couple of months back,’ Winder explained. ‘We get to drink whisky these days.’
They hadn’t changed much and they both wore ribbons, won as NCOs, and fitted well into the mess, one day calling everybody ‘sir’, the next using their Christian names, to make nonsense of the doubts in blimp circles about promoting men from the ranks.
While they were talking Reeves appeared. He was brown and his hair and eyebrows were bleached white by the sun. He was in command of B Squadron and he looked tired and strained.
‘The bloody dust fills your nose, eyes, ears and mouth,’ he explained. ‘My body will get quite a surprise when it gets introduced to a bath. I expect you’ll get C Squadron because Ormonde’s just been sent to Gezira with jaundice. Young Ackroyd, your old driver’s there, too, with a septic knee. We’ve all got something. Sores or sandfly fever which I suppose comes from getting sand in your flies.’
The Stuart tank was a strange-looking vehicle, tall and light-looking, with track links mounted in solid rubber blocks. It weighed only twelve tons but it had a 250 horsepower engine, carried a crew of four and, with its 38 mm. armour, could travel fast under good conditions.
‘Unfortunately,’ Reeves said, ‘it’s only got a 37-millimetre peashooter and two machine guns.’
As the engine covers came off, Josh stared. ‘It looks like an aeroplane engine,’ he said.
‘That’s what it is. The fan looks like a propeller. If you go fast enough, you might even be able to take off and drop bombs. It runs on high-octane fuel which is not so easy to come by, but it gives us a fast take-off and, with that gun, we might need one from time to time.’
‘How does it handle?’
‘They say a chap from 3rd Tanks took one out in the desert and tried to shed one of the tracks. He said it handled like a well-trained cow pony. For my money it’s the best example of Anglo-American co-operation I’ve come across.’
Now that he was well in the saddle, Rydderch had got over his feeling that Josh might snatch the Regiment from under him and was friendly and welcoming.
‘I’m giving you C Squadron,’ he said. ‘And, for God’s sake, take care of it. We’re not short of tanks but we have a suspicion that a lot of people at headquarters don’t have the slightest idea how to use them.’
Running a squadron was no problem to Josh, though he considered himself an amateur when it came to knowing about tanks. Aubrey, Pallovicini and Winder were in his squadron, and he was also given Packer, Neill and Flood on the understanding that he was the man best able to bring them up to scratch. When Tyas Edgar Ackroyd turned up, cured, from hospital, the thing was complete. The Goffs’ lucky charm was back on the job and by means of a little exchange among the crews, he soon also had two of Ackoyd’s friends, Privates Cyril Harbottle and George Robinson, as gunner and radio operator.
Troop by troop they went to the firing area west of the Fayoum Road, everybody’s mind occupied with the new German 88 mm anti-tank gun which was said to be able to knock out a Honey at three thousand yards. The only answer seemed to lie in the Honey’s speed and mobility and, between them, Josh and his crew began working out a system whereby Ackroyd advanced flat out while Harbottle kept the telescopic sight of his gun on the target. As soon as they were within range, the tank halted, Harbottle fired without any further orders, and the sound of the shot was the signal for Ackroyd to let in his clutch and set off again. The operation took about four seconds and it was Josh’s view that a troop of tanks thundering down on a German gunner in this way would be enough to put him off his target.
‘Probably put him off his food, too,’ Aubrey suggested.
Towards the end of the year they moved out to The Wire, Mussolini’s rusty entanglement that ran along the Libyan border to the Great Sand Sea in the south. It was supposed to keep out camels and wandering Arabs, but it didn’t appear to keep out the British patrols. It was clear there was something in the wind and they began to get rumours of a big new push westwards to gain control of the northern seaboard to help besieged Malta and provide a springboard back into Europe.
Arriving before dark, they lit their fires at once so they wouldn’t be seen and fried up their bully beef and biscuits, before getting down to work on the engines, radios, guns and power traverses. The sun sank, the desert became yellow, then bronze and finally red. Washing in the dregs of their scanty water allowance, as darkness came they pulled the flaps round the bivouacs they had constructed against the sides of the tanks and sat smoking. The following morning, Ackroyd woke them. ‘There’s not much water, so what do you prefer? A shave or a mug of tea?’
Josh stood up and stretched. At this point of the day the desert was beautiful and it was good to be alive.
‘It’d be perfect,’ Ackroyd said. ‘If it had running water.’
But then the sky began to pale and the desert became brittle in the brilliant glare of the sunshine. As the heat increased, every object was affected by it, the burnished sands reflecting and magnifying it until the air burned in a haze which shimmered and drifted like a fog. Lorries appeared with tubing and hessian, the tanks were camouflaged to look like trucks and they moved quietly to a position south of Sollum.
Mail arrived and Toby Reeves waved a blue-tinted envelope in front of Josh’s nose.
‘Like a sniff of perfume?’ he asked. ‘It’s a letter from my mistress.’
There was a letter from Jocelyn, informing him that Rosanna and Kitty appeared to have settled down.
‘I’m doing a lot of riding,’ she announced. ‘Feeling quite the country lady. I think I shall like it here. I wonder what it will be like when we meet again. Friends of mine say that soldiers get unemotional and don’t think like hum
an beings. I wonder if we shall be as good together as we were before you left.’
Included was a letter from Rosanna herself. ‘Dere Our Father,’ it said, ‘I hope you kill lots of Gurmans. I can now ride the poony without a leding rein. Hoping it finds you as it leeves me at present. Rosanna Mary Keyho.’
That evening Rydderch called all squadron and troop leaders to his headquarters ten-tonner and, under his instruction, they began to crayon the rings and arrows of a westward movement on their maps.
Watched by Ackroyd and the rest of his crew, Josh clambered to the turret of his tank.
‘Start up,’ he said. ‘We’re leading.’
‘One of the arrows on the map?’ Harbottle asked. ‘I’ve often wanted to see one of them things on the ground.’
‘It might be blurred by the time we get there,’ Josh said. ‘We’ve got a Recce Corps, a Recce troop, a gunner OP and a section of sappers in front of us.’
‘No ENSA girls?’ Ackroyd asked.
As the long columns headed west in the darkness, the desert filled with the roar of the radial engines and the creaking protests of springs and bogey wheels. Settling down in leaguer for the night, they could hear the detonations as demolition parties blew holes in the Wire, but they were drowned by a tremendous thunderstorm that filled the desert with noise and purple lightning. The petrol lorries came up to top up tanks and the following morning as they brewed tea they received their first information about the enemy. Leaving their camouflage behind them, they moved through the Wire. There was no sign of the enemy and no sign of danger and Libya looked exactly the same as Egypt – brown, empty and bare.
As they moved briskly forward, the radio clattered. It was Rydderch. ‘ Josh? There are two hundred MET moving along the Trigh Lora. I want you to take C Squadron and cut them off. I’ll move north with Toby Reeves and B Squadron. A Squadron will be in support.’
As they roared across the dusty desert, Josh spoke to Ackroyd. ‘Two hundred mechanised enemy troops will mean tanks and anti-tank guns. So keep those revs up, Tyas.’
The Trigh Lora lay to the north, a desert track that stretched from horizon to horizon and had been flattened to a highway by convoy after convoy seeking its firm surface. Bringing his tanks to a long, low rise, Josh paused to let them come up behind him in a hull-down position. Ahead of them was the enemy column, moving slowly, as if totally unaware of the presence of hostile forces. Then suddenly, as if they had spotted the turrets of the tanks along the rise, the armoured cars which were escorting them began to chivvy them along like excited terriers.
‘They’ve seen us, sir!’ Robinson called from the radio position. ‘They’re telling the column to scatter. I’ve heard it before. I know what they’re saying.’
‘Are you on their wavelength?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘Then give me the microphone. I can speak German. I’ll tell ’em we’re friends.’
Lifting the microphone, Josh began to speak slowly. ‘Kein alarm,’ he said. ‘Kein alarm. Wir haben englische Panzer mit der Besatzung in Gefangenschaft.’
As the enemy vehicles, which had broken to the north and north-east, slowed down, swung in large arcs and began to rejoin the column, Josh rose in the turret and waved his arm. ‘Okay, children,’ he said into his microphone. ‘Off we go!’
Twelve tanks leapt over the crest of the rise like hounds after a fox and roared down the slope flat out, Josh’s Honey in the lead, its pennant streaming, the wind trailing the dust behind like a banner. The armoured cars began to bustle about again and he saw Aubrey send one of them spinning on its side, and a light tank go up in flames. A second tank, hurriedly abandoned, petrol pouring from underneath the engine on to the sand, was quickly disposed of as Harbottle put a burst of tracer into the pool so that it roared up in a flower of orange flame and black smoke. As they swung and circled among the thin-skinned vehicles, as if they were ships on the high seas, the enemy column began to scatter to the west, but not before a good two dozen coils of black smoke lifted into the air to show their kills.
With all the circling and movement, they were uncertain of their position but as the light failed they found a group of armoured cars from the King’s Dragoon Guards from whom they picked up directions. A petrol lorry, directed by bursts of tracer bullets into the dark sky, refuelled them, and Aubrey’s tank, which had had a bogey wheel shot off, was immobilised as they radioed for the technical sergeant’s lorry, an enormous vehicle with enough paraphernalia inside to keep a regiment of tanks on the move.
‘He’s probably got a bed in there, too,’ Aubrey said. ‘With a couple of Egyptian bints in it.’
Despite their success, the Germans had not reacted to the rest of the army’s manoeuvre as had been expected and rumours were coming in of German Mark IIs and IVs knocking out Honeys and Crusaders, whose little cannon simply could not reply. The following day, Josh was leading C and A squadrons north to rejoin when a frantic call for help from the Colonel that B Squadron was facing over a hundred enemy tanks sent them rushing northwards at top speed. Well over fifty tanks appeared from the west, moving across their bows in the sunshine. There was no need to shout orders.
Aubrey’s tank was the first to fire, then Josh himself was yelling into the microphone.
‘Driver, halt! Traverse right!’
Harbottle’s wrist twisted and, with a hiss of air, the turret moved.
‘Right again!’
Harbottle’s wrist twisted again and the turret screamed round until Josh saw a black tank with a gun pointed straight at them. He identified it as Italian.
‘Steady! On! Fire!’
As Harbottle’s fingers squeezed, the tank was shaken by a great spasm and the gun recoiled with a deafening crack.
Out of the corner of his eye Josh could see tanks on fire then a shell hit the ground in front, leapt up and threw out white sparks as it scored a groove along the side of the Honey. Harbottle’s gun cracked again, and Josh saw the nose of the Italian tank lift. A tongue of flame shot skywards, becoming a monstrous sun as the ball of light expanded slowly, grey-edged and bloated. There was a dull roar as the ammunition exploded and the tank seemed to burst apart in showers of metal that came hailing down on the hot sand and the other tanks around it. A figure, its face blackened, its clothes and hair alight, stumbled through the smoke for a few yards, then fell and in a frenzy of agony rolled frantically in the sand in an effort to put out the flames. Gradually, its arms and legs still flailing, it began to move more slowly while they watched with horrified fascination until, with a last convulsive heave, it lay still.
‘Got the bastard,’ Harbottle said, but there wasn’t a trace of triumph in his voice.
As they broke leaguer in the cold dark of the next dawn, they were hungry, tired and unenthusiastic, and mummified with the dirt on their bodies. A and B Squadrons had gone north and C was on its own again, moving forward warily.
It was a day of confused skirmishing, with enemy and friendly tanks appearing at odd unexpected moments. C squadron added four to its bag, to say nothing of a good dozen lorries and a petrol tanker from another Italian column they stumbled across. Nevertheless, to Josh, they seemed to be doing the thing wrongly. Cavalry action remained the same, whether in tanks or on horseback. Massed, they were capable of smashing armies, yet they were being used in valueless penny numbers and were being knocked out in the same way.
As the day drew to a close, they were all silent and grim-faced. The sense of adventure with which they had started the battle had been replaced by a mounting weariness, and they were even beginning to grow a little unwilling when they were ordered to attack at Sidi Rezegh, where German and Italian tanks were moving forward to destroy the infantry, guns and tanks which had occupied the airfield in an attempt to link up with a sortie from besieged Tobruk.
C Squadron was the first to make contact, and the fir
st signs of the battle were the tell-tale columns of dark smoke rising into the air along the horizon above the black dots of moving vehicles. Then, as they lifted over the rise, they saw the airfield below them, littered with destroyed German and Italian aeroplanes and wrecked tanks. The desert to south and west was covered with a cloud of thin-skinned vehicles and the slope of the escarpment was crawling with figures digging trenches, putting down mines and dragging forward anti-tank and field guns.
The weary men with the spades gave them the thumbs-up sign as they roared past like the field going for the first fence at a point-to-point. Then, as they moved between a group of burning tanks, they suddenly found themselves surrounded by fountains of red and yellow earth and flying stones. Ahead, an array of monster tanks was coming at them through the smoke in a solid line abreast, the blood-red sky behind silhouetting them as they lurched and bucketed over the uneven ground.
‘Harbottle! Twelve hundred yards! Pick out the nearest and keep firing at it until you stop it!’
There was a vicious crack and a buffet of air, but the shell merely bounced off the monster.
‘Caro One, Two, Three and Four! Let’s get out of here! Head for the derelict tanks! And make it fast! Tyas, reverse and give it all you’ve got!’
The red fountains of earth were still rising around them as they retreated and Josh’s mouth was filled with the acrid taste of cordite. Over the sound of high explosive and the crack of his own gun he could hear the terrifying swish of armour-piercing shells that seemed to suck the breath out of his lungs as they passed. Several times the Honey lurched as it was hit but Josh hardly noticed as he yelled into the microphone on the regimental frequency.