The Iron Stallions

by Max Hennessy

  There were also enclosures in the form of a limp-looking pressed flower from Kitty as a birthday present and a drawing of a tank, flying a monstrous Union Jack from Rosanna.

  ‘This is yew,’ it said underneath.

  For some time Reeves had been looking strained and ill and Josh suggested he should try to get leave in Cairo.

  ‘No, thanks,’ Reeves said. ‘Something’s coming. I want to be in it.’

  ‘It might not be yet.’

  ‘On the other hand, it just might.’

  The sun was slipping away and the scorched earth was cooling. The breeze was moving a little now and the flies, which normally crawled up your nose, fed on the moisture at the corners of eyes and lips and flew into your mouth when you spoke, were losing their persistence. Spirits were high and morale good despite the recent mauling, and there was none of the discontent and disillusion that might have been expected, only the little nagging hurts caused by the death of friends.

  Reeves remained morose and quiet and in the end he came to Josh’s tank to say he’d made a will.

  ‘I’ve left it all to you,’ he said.

  Josh looked startled. ‘What in God’s name for?’

  Reeves looked lost. ‘Well, you can’t leave all that lot lying around loose, and something might happen to me. I’ve nobody else. Not a soul in the bloody world. Besides–’ he gave an embarrassed smile ‘–I always felt sort of guilty about you getting expelled from school. I know it was the other cowardly buggers who wouldn’t help haul you up, but I’ve often felt perhaps I ought to have owned up that it was my idea and got the push with you.’

  Josh smiled. ‘Have you thought you might suddenly fall for an ATS girl in Cairo?’

  Reeves smiled. ‘Or a Gyppo bint.’

  ‘Especially, if you went on leave as I think you should.’

  Reeves shook his head. ‘Too late now,’ he said. He cocked his thumb. ‘There’s a shell or a bullet over there somewhere that has my number on it.’

  ‘Nonsense. You’re just tired.’

  Reeves smiled. ‘I know, old boy. And I know also that Uncle Erwin’s bound to have another go at us before long because he wants to get to Cairo. And this time it’s our last chance, because if we make a cock of it this time we’ve had it.’

  Despite being so close to Cairo, the British position had been well chosen, with the sea to the north and the Qattara Depression to the south. Where the 7th Armoured waited, Alam el Halfa was the key point because Rommel would never dare by-pass it and it was even hoped to lure him into a gap with British tanks and artillery dug into the hillside above. The new general seemed quite certain that Rommel would be defeated.

  New equipment began to arrive, new weapons, new vehicles, self-propelled guns, and new tanks – Shermans, some of them, capable of twenty-five miles an hour, with a crew of five, armour twice as thick as before, and, above all, a gun that would match anything the Germans possessed. No longer would they have to go in for Balaclava charges to get within range but could sit hull-down in safety and blast away at their own range. For the first time, they felt they had a chance.

  Aubrey had actually seen one. ‘Over thirty tons,’ he enthused. ‘Four hundred horsepower engine. And a damn great 75 mill. gun.’

  Josh smiled, finding it hard to disillusion him. ‘I’ve got news for you, old son,’ he said gently. ‘We’re not having them in 7th Armoured.’

  The German attack came when the new commander had been with his army for only a matter of a fortnight, but there was little of the normal tension and a remarkable absence of panic messages from headquarters. Montgomery seemed to be awaiting the attack with complete confidence.

  When the gunfire started it was soon clear that the Axis forces were driving at the southern end of the line, and were intending a swing to the coast to cut off the Eighth Army before advancing to the Nile. As part of the reserve, the 19th were not involved because Montgomery had ordered that the reserve was to be held back for his own attack, and several of them watched with Rydderch and Leduc from behind the Alam el Halfa Ridge, their radios tuned to the frequencies of the regiments taking part.

  Light tanks of a yeomanry regiment were moving backwards in a cloud of dust, keeping just out of range and manoeuvring quickly and skilfully. Through his glasses, Josh could see the bigger enemy tanks coming straight up the line of telegraph posts which crossed their front, firing at the retreating British who were making a wide sweep so as not to give away the position of the defences.

  ‘That’s a devil of a gun they’ve got there,’ Rydderch commented, peering through his binoculars.

  ‘New long-barrelled 75,’ Leduc said. ‘Can knock out a heavy tank at three thousand yards. Intelligence have been on to it for some time.’

  The German tanks were all turning left now and beginning a slow advance. Gunfire began to roll across the desert and, almost at once, it seemed, half the retreating yeomanry were burning as the new guns took their toll. The situation suddenly began to look serious and there seemed to be a complete hole in the defence, but the line of anti-tank guns waited until the German tanks were within a few hundred yards and, as they crashed out together, all along the line the Germans lurched, wheeled and stopped, some of them with smoke pouring from them. As they tried to move forward, an artillery barrage fell on them and, as they were checked again, several of them began to swing away.

  It was time now, Josh knew, for the British heavy tanks to join in, the classic cavalry situation with the enemy disabled and confused. His father and grandfather must have acted in such a situation a dozen times with horses. But there was no sign of tanks coming over the ridge and they could hear the infantry yelling for the artillery again.

  ‘We seem to be a little on the slow side today,’ Leduc said dryly. ‘Somebody should get out their whips.’

  Even as he spoke, 22nd Armoured appeared over the crest to the north. Pennants flying, dust streaming, as they bore down with squealing tracks, they reminded Josh for all the world of the famous picture of the charge of the British cavalry at Waterloo. The light was just beginning to fade but the Germans were beginning to mill round in confusion and shot was whistling all over the desert in the usual cloud of smoke and dust. Directly in front two Mark IVs were burning and on the right a British tank went up with the crash of a shot which cleared the equipment from the hull.

  It was frustrating not to know what was happening, but the British armour, aided by the Desert Air Force, was not only holding Rommel but was also destroying his tanks. Far from his bases and short of petrol, in the end he was obliged to withdraw, leaving behind him over fifty tanks, several hundred vehicles and a great many dead.

  ‘First blood to us,’ Packer said.

  Dodgin, looking like the Old Man of the Desert, gave him an amused look. ‘Come off it, lad,’ he said. ‘First blood was ages ago. 1940, when I was young.’

  There was a great deal of satisfaction at the outcome of the battle, and training started for their own attack, under a different concept of battle planned by the new general. The desert mentality was deeply concerned with outflanking movements, but Montgomery’s idea was for a head-on clash against fixed defences, the tanks geared to the speed of the men on their feet.

  Whole divisions were pulled back and retrained, and slowly the desert thinking fell into a new mould. Even the older hands, with experience in plenty, began to appreciate that the old slap-happy attitudes would not do.

  7th Armoured were established in the soft sand of the Ragil Depression. They were skilful and battle-wise, but mechanically they were run down. Their tanks had seen long and hard service and their wheeled vehicles, after much wear and tear, were being maintained only with difficulty. Because of this and the fact that they had no Shermans, it was not to be their rôle to tackle the Germans head-on when the time came but to be part of a feint to draw the Germans away from t
he main attack.

  ‘It would be more to the point,’ Reeves said dryly, ‘if the main attack drew them away from us.’

  They weren’t sure how to take it. Nobody liked the thought that they weren’t up to standard, but the idea that they were being kept back for further operations satisfied them because they’d come to think they were élite troops not to be wasted in a simple slogging match.

  As the date drew nearer, a vast deception was practised. Enormous numbers of dummy tanks, guns and lorries were built in the south and it was possible for the Germans to see huge numbers of genuine tanks, armoured cars, guns and trucks astride the tracks leading in that direction while wireless traffic kept their monitoring service busy. It was nothing but a sham. The radio traffic meant nothing, the new water pipeline was made of old petrol tins and the armour the Germans had seen moving south had swung north after dark and left more dummies behind them for the German aircraft to spot.

  Towards the end of the month, senior officers were called to a Cairo cinema to hear the plan. It was a day of revelation and Josh came away impressed by Montgomery’s professional skill. There were no heroics as he told them he intended to destroy the enemy with a hard slogging fight. They were going to destroy his forces methodically without ever relaxing the pressure. He expected it to last a matter of twelve days. The case-hardened old desert hands, with sand between their toes, had arrived clinging to the loyalties of the past and with no high expectations, but they came out – Josh among them – absolutely convinced. At long last they began to feel that somewhere just ahead was the end of it all, the end to the endless flogging up and down the desert, that Alex and Cairo with their fleshpots and squalors were finally about to be put behind them for good and all.

  The following day, Rydderch held his own battle conference, his men sitting in a hollow in the sand while he explained what was wanted. They looked incredibly young, but remarkably tough. Later, Montgomery himself appeared, riding in a staff car, tossing cigarettes to anybody who wanted them and blowing like a fresh breeze through the tired old habits.

  During the evening, sandstorms blew up, and empty petrol tins bowled along with the dust and scraps of paper and torn-out camel thorn, banging away like bombs as they went. As dusk came, men and machines began to move to their assembly areas. Tanks, guns and vehicles slipped into the positions occupied by the dummies and remained under cover through the blazing heat of the next day. No fires were allowed, no washing, no airing of bedding, no digging, and all the tracks they had made were carefully obliterated.

  As the light began to fade and the desert turned silvery, there was a cold wind blowing from the sea to chafe the gritty dust against the skin. A few of the older hands were quiet and thoughtful, thinking of friends who already lay in the desert, beneath crooked crosses jammed into old petrol tins full of sand or sticking out of piles of snake-infested rocks.

  Sitting beside his tank, Josh felt the urge to write home. All round him other men were setting their thoughts on paper, penning letters to girls who meant nothing to them and never would, simply because they felt they couldn’t go into battle without letting someone know their emotions.

  The sky darkened and the desert grew quieter. Despite its hugeness, there were always sounds about them – an unseen lorry’s gears grinding in the distance, the faint growl of a moving tank, the stutter of a machine gun or the thud of a far-off anti-tank weapon. Waiting in the white moonlight, Josh began to wonder if the Germans wouldn’t be suspicious but, even as he wondered, a battery of six-pounders began slowly to bang away.

  An endless stream of lorries was moving past, the dust on the faces of the men inside making them seem like ghosts. As the moon rose higher, all movement stopped and to Josh it seemed as if the whole desert was holding its breath. Above them he could hear the sound of aircraft seeking out the enemy’s positions but over mile upon mile the silence was the silence of a church.

  The seconds ticked on. He looked at his watch again and had just lifted his head when he saw the whole sky turn red and the noise of the guns hit him in a solid thump that shook the desert and cut the sky in half. The whole front ahead of him began to sparkle, the horizon convulsed in an unsteady glare. Through the confusion of sound he heard a machine gun and the clear-cut bark of a German 88, but whole squadrons of aircraft were passing overhead now, drowning conversation with their throbbing, and Josh found his heart thumping.

  A glare of acid-white light on the horizon marked the end of a German position, then there was a pause as the artillery moved on to different targets and the infantry began to move forward.

  The tank crews stood talking quietly as they waited, caught by the excitement of the moment. Reeves was silent and Josh wondered what he was thinking. He hadn’t mentioned his premonition of death again but he knew he hadn’t forgotten it. For an extrovert, gregarious man, he was quiet and subdued these days.

  Ormonde was comparing conditions with the conditions he’d found when he’d first arrived in 1940. Aubrey was listening with a grave face, his thoughts obviously far away over the horizon.

  Tracer shells from a Bofors gun lifted in the distance and the beams of a searchlight shone into the sky as a beacon to indicate the way. Somewhere in the darkness a voice called out instructions to the guns.

  As the battery crashed out, officers and men ducked at the concussion, then Josh heard the screech of whistles and saw a line of steel-helmeted figures moving up, their rifles at the high port, the moon touching their bayonets.

  The tank crews scrambled to their seats, wriggling into the warm interiors, operators bent over their radios, gunners crouched below their commanders’ feet. Starters whined and the engines roared into life, the flicker of exhausts throwing the next tank in line into silhouette.

  ‘Okay, Tyas,’ Josh said quietly into the microphone. ‘Off we go!’

  Nine

  Enormous volumes of dust enveloped the desert and the night thickened as the tanks growled forward.

  The task of the men in the south was to press with sufficient determination to force the Germans to keep two whole armoured divisions away from the main fight, but not to incur casualties that would cripple them for any future operations. The prospects of easy success were not high. Many of the vehicles were in poor condition still, with radios and even guns unserviceable, while opposite them the defences were strong and deep, the enemy of high quality, and the country ahead rough and broken or covered with soft impeding sand.

  Moving up in the dusty moonlight, Josh watched the first trickles of prisoners moving to the rear, some of them stunned and dazed-looking after the colossal barrage. Among them was an Italian officer wearing his braided cap and a jacket over red silk pyjamas. Guns were trumpeting all round them, and ahead blue lights showed where sappers worked to clear a path and mark it with tapes. Somewhere just in front two machine guns were firing through the murk, the tracers flicking just over Josh’s head. Then there was an explosion on his right, and as the air cleared, he saw an armoured car lying on its side, licked by flames, its crew staggering about, holding their ringing heads.

  They began to refuel, while the gunners removed the muzzle covers from the guns and fed the belts of ammunition into the Besas and Brownings. Leduc came down the line in his tank, his head out of the turret and giving instructions as they marshalled themselves into order.

  ‘They’re about six miles ahead,’ he shouted across. ‘We move at 2 a.m.’

  Ahead of them there were gun flashes as far as the eye could see. It was bitterly cold and Josh shivered. Like everybody else, he was quietly praying they’d be through the minefield and out in the open before daylight.

  As the radio crackled with orders, he glanced about him and gave the signal.

  ‘Caro One, Two, Three and Four. Advance.’

  Creeping forward in line ahead at the prescribed speed of three miles an hour, they followed the m
asked lamps nose-to-tail, four groups each led by its reconnaissance troop in scout cars and followed by batteries of artillery, the new self-propelled guns’ motor infantry and anti-tank and anti-aircraft guns. Clouds of white dust obscured everything and, as the vehicles ahead became obscured, the movement became a nightmare for the choked and blinded drivers.

  As they got into position, reports came back that the resistance was stiffening. The infantry had made good progress, however, though they had failed to capture all their objectives, and tanks had been pushed up to help.

  Josh began to watch the sky. It was growing dangerously late and he was well aware that if they didn’t get through before first light they’d have little chance against the 88s. Time was running out and, standing on the brink of the new day, the pyramid-like mound of Mount Himeimat was still in enemy hands to plague them.

  The radio crackled. ‘Caro Leader. Can you move forward at all?’

  ‘Not far. But I’ll try.’

  Reaching the old front line, they began to pass through the gaps in the minefield and emerge into No Man’s Land where the bursting shells and the rattling of machine guns answered the guns. As the leading tanks reached the captured enemy outposts, gaps had already been cleared by the Engineers, but at the next stretch of mines they were obliged to halt because the infantry ahead were still trying to fight their way forward. As dawn approached, they were still barely halfway to their objectives, still closed up and hemmed in by minefields.

  Leduc’s voice came over the radio, ordering them to deploy and, moving gingerly, they opened out. As the sky lightened they could see the ground rising gently ahead to a ridge. The landscape was already scarred with the wreckage of the night’s fighting. Engineers still laboured in the minefield gaps, signallers repaired telephone lines, ambulances growled up and down, while salvage parties dragged back damaged vehicles. As a sudden squall of fire from the German artillery set light to a group of vehicles and thickened the dust storm, every kind of unit imaginable began to open out in the patches of favourable ground, while the guns, swinging off the routes, blasted away with no regard for anyone, their gun barrels alongside command posts and vehicles until the shattered occupants bolted for somewhere safer and quieter.