by Shaun Clarke
By the middle of June, when Greaves was still recuperating in hospital in Alexandria, the British attempted to relieve Tobruk with Operation Battleaxe, but were quickly forced back to the starting line. In July, a few days after Captain Stirling was moved into the bed beside Greaves, General Claude Auchinleck replaced General Wavell as Commander-in-Chief in the Middle East. Then in November, when Captain Stirling, admirably energetic even when on crutches, was telling Greaves about his idea for small raiding parties, another major British offensive intended to defeat the Axis forces in Cyrenaica and free Tobruk, began with a series of confused battles around Sidi Rezech, but ended with more gains for the Germans.
Now, in late November, the major battle for control of the Western Desert had begun and Stirling’s dream of small raiding parties had become, at least in principle, a reality. Whether or not the raids would be successful was another matter entirely.
They’d better be successful, Greaves thought grimly as his Chevrolet raced across the vast, featureless plain, taking him closer to Agedabia, only 40 miles from Mersa Brega, where the retreat had begun. If they don’t, he thought, the fate of L Detachment will be sealed and Stirling’s dream will be smashed. The SAS will be no more.
Shocked by that idea, Greaves straightened in his seat and glanced at the setting sun, going down like pouring lava and spreading its crimson fire across the horizon, bringing darkness to Tunis and Tripoli and the Gulf of Sirte, to the unforgettable blue of the Mediterranean and the desert’s dazzling whiteness. The other raiding parties, he knew, had already done what they could do in that same protective darkness – at Tamit, at Sirte, and at Agheila – but whether or not it had been worth it he had yet to find out.
Had they succeeded or failed? Had they lived or died? Would he ever see Stirling, Callaghan, Lewes or any of the others again? Indeed, would he himself return from this mission? That, too, he would soon find out.
‘There’s the sea, Lieutenant,’ Private Purbridge said. ‘That must be Agedabia.’
‘It is,’ Greaves replied.
He glanced all around him at the vast, darkening desert, seeing, due east, nothing but mile upon featureless mile but for the black lines of distant dunes; and, due north and north-west as far as Tripoli, the glitter of sea sinking into sunset. It was difficult to accept that this vast, barren wasteland joining Tripolitania to Cyrenaica was filled with the tanks, lorries, armoured cars and seasoned troops of the legendary General Rommel’s Panzer divisions. In the silence of the desert’s failing light there was no sign of war.
Nevertheless, Greaves reflected, they are all around us, so we must be careful from now on.
‘The airfield’s just over that ridge, due northwest,’ he told Purbridge. Drop us off near the top of the ridge, where we should still be out of sight.’
‘Will do, Lieutenant.’
Five minutes later the lorry was bouncing over a mixture of soft sand and gravel as it made its way up the gentle slope of the low-lying ridge. Just before it reached the top – where it would have been silhouetted against the skyline – Private Purbridge braked to a halt.
‘Home and dry,’ he said.
Greaves and the other two clambered out, carrying their small arms. Taff then picked up the bag of Lewes bombs and slung it over his shoulder. Greaves walked the few steps to the edge of the ridge, peered down through the darkness, then returned to the lorry.
‘It’s too dark to see much from here, so we’ll have to start hiking willy-nilly.’ He checked his watch, then spoke to Purbridge. ‘Without knowing just how far away the airfield is, or how well it’s guarded, I’ve no way of knowing how long this is going to take or when we’ll get back. My suggestion, therefore, is that you wait here until first light. If we’re not back by then, assume we’ve been captured or shot and drive yourself back to Jalo. If, on the other hand, you hear sounds of activity – gunfire, sirens or, hopefully, our exploding Lewes bombs – you can assume we’re in the thick of things and will be attempting to make our way back. In that case, keep your eyes peeled for us and prepare to get going. Understood?’
‘Yes, sir.’
Greaves turned to Taff Clayton and Neil Moffatt. ‘Right, lads, let’s get going.’
With that, he led them over the low ridge and down the dark, gentle slope at the other side, marching towards the airfield. It was not an easy march. In fact, the area surrounding the airfield was patrolled constantly by German troops, both on foot and in lorries, so the SAS men had repeatedly to drop to the ground, faces pressed to the soft sand, and wait for the patrols or trucks to pass, silently praying that they would not be seen. Naturally, this made their advance on the airfield slow and nerve-racking. Eventually, however, they reached the perimeter and found it not only securely fenced, but patrolled by the crack troops of the Panzer Grenadier Regiments of the 90th Light Division.
‘This is not going to be easy,’ Greaves whispered as he knelt behind a sandy ridge, beside Taff and Neil, a good half mile from the wire. ‘We have to get across that flat stretch without being seen, then somehow get through the wire. Not easy at all.’
‘What I’d like to know,’ Taff said, ‘is …’ He coughed into his fist. ‘Is it actually possible?’
Surprisingly, it was the solemn, almost anonymous Neil who gave them the impetus. ‘Of course it’s possible. We just advance an inch at a time, belly-down on the ground, stopping every time we spot a guard or when those searchlights come in our direction. It might take us a little bit of time, but in the end we’ll get there.’
‘You think so?’ Taff asked doubtfully while scanning that distant wire.
‘Yes,’ Neil replied firmly, yet glancing at Lieutenant Greaves for support.
‘I agree,’ Greaves told him. ‘Besides, what else can we do? We can’t turn back now.’
‘Just watch me,’ Taff said. ‘I’ll be out of here like a bat out of hell.’
‘I’m not dragging this bag of bombs anywhere,’ Neil solemnly informed him, ‘except through that wire.’
‘Well, Corporal?’ Greaves asked, giving Taff the choice.
Taff sighed. ‘Oh, what the hell? Yes, sir, let’s do it.’
‘Good man,’ Greaves said. He glanced at the heavy bag of bombs. ‘You won’t be able to drag that with you, so let’s divide them up between us right now. How many are there?’
‘Thirty-five,’ Taff said.
‘What?
‘Thirty-five.’
Greaves sighed. ‘Right, Corporal, that’s eleven to you, eleven to Neil and thirteen to me. But how the hell do we carry them?’
‘There are smaller bags inside this one,’ Taff said. ‘We take one bag apiece.’
‘Excellent. Quick, man!’
Taff opened the big bag, pulled out three smaller bags, divided the small Lewes bombs into three piles, with two extra for Greaves, then put them into the separate bags and gave the heaviest to Greaves. Each man then slung his own bag onto his back and tied it to his shoulders with its fixed cords. They were now all set to leave.
‘Right,’ Greaves said. ‘Let’s go.’
They moved out immediately, first running at the crouch but soon forced to drop to the ground and crawl forward, first on hands and knees, then belly-down. This was both tedious and arduous, every yard a struggle. Thirty minutes after starting they were already feeling the strain and realized that they had advanced only a little. Slithering like snakes down a sand-and-gravel slope to the bed of a dried-up wadi, they took a short break, tried to ease their aching muscles, then began the crawl up the other side. Reaching the top and peering over the rim, they saw that the area between there and the perimeter was literally swarming with German troops.
‘Jesus!’ Taff whispered.
‘I don’t care how long it takes,’ Greaves said, also whispering, ‘but we’re going to go through that damned wire. Any arguments, gentlemen?’
Taff and Neil did not argue.
It took four hours, for they advanced an inch at a time. The guards marched to and fro, and
the searchlights swept the terrain, as the three SAS men snaked forward on their bellies, stopped, started again and repeated this pattern endlessly, feeling like worms in the earth, but obliged to continue, working their way unseen to the wire.
First one hour, then two, and still with half the journey to go. At one point a truck raced past them so close it spewed sand over them; at another they had to lie as still as corpses for an hour with Germans and Italians congregating yards away. The Axis troops lit cigarettes, conversed in their separate languages, shared a flask of water or wine, then finally wandered off in opposite directions, letting the SAS men advance again – a very slow advance, the so-called ‘leopard crawl’, painstaking and stealthy.
The third hour ran interminably into the fourth and they had finally made it. They were right at the fence.
Greaves checked his watch and saw that it was nearly midnight, which just made him feel more tired.
Checking left and right, he saw that the nearest guarded entanglements were quite a long way off and that the searchlights were hitting the ground well away from the fence. Relieved, he rose to his knees and removed a small pair of wire-cutters from his webbed belt.
‘Have you got the same?’ he asked Taff and Neil.
‘Yes,’ they replied simultaneously.
‘Good. Get to it, lads.’
Between them they managed to cut through the wire in no time, taking care that it did not shake too much, lest it attract the attention of the guards at the entanglements on both sides. When the wires had been parted, they left the cutters on the ground – they were now an unnecessary burden – and made their way quietly through the opening, heading straight for the airfield.
Probably because the wired perimeter was so heavily guarded, there were no guards on the airfield itself, nor on the parked aircraft, which were mostly CR42s, an Italian biplane fighter-bomber.
‘A gift from God!’ Greaves whispered, smiling delightedly at Taff and Neil. ‘When you’ve planted all your bombs – or if Jerry sees any of us before we’ve done so – head straight back to the opening and try to make your way back to the lorry. Good luck, lads. Go!’
They all scattered in different directions, heading out in triangular formation to work their way down the three rows of planes. They went from one plane to the next over the next forty-five minutes, placing their thirty-five bombs one by one, each man waving to the others each time he planted one, before moving on to the next plane. No one came near them. Nor did they see any Axis sentries. The job took all that time, but it was easy to do, and when they had disposed of all their bombs, they met under the wing of one of the last two planes, the three of them as happy as Larry.
‘We’re short of two bombs,’ Neil said.
‘Damn!’ Greaves exclaimed.
‘If these thirty-five bombs go off,’ Taff said, still grinning, ‘I won’t complain about the two short.’
‘Those fuses are set for sixty minutes,’ Neil reminded them, ‘so we’d better get going.’
‘Shit, yes!’ Taff said.
In fact, the bombs began exploding before they cleared the airfield, five minutes earlier than anticipated. Most went off at the same time, some only slightly later, and the combined effect was spectacular, creating a stunning display of searing white flames and billowing smoke, accompanied by a cacophony of explosions composed of the actual bombs and the igniting petrol tanks of the planes. Within seconds the whole airfield resembled a modern version of hell, with flames eating into flames, smoke spiralling and billowing upwards to form immense, oily black clouds, and burning rubber, melting perspex and red-hot metal spewing skywards and raining back down.
Luckily, by then the three SAS men had already made it to the barbed wire, gone through the opening, and were running at the crouch back into the darkness unseen by the Germans, most of whom were racing the other way, towards the unexpected hell of the airfield.
This time, since they did not have to crawl on their bellies, Greaves and his two companions covered the same distance in an easy thirty minutes instead of an arduous four hours. When they got back to the ridge, Purbridge was waiting for them, the engine of the Chevrolet already turning over. When they were safely in their seats, he took off – in the words of Taff – like a bat out of hell.
15
With all the raiding parties back in Jalo Oasis, Captain Stirling called a meeting between his officers to discuss their various adventures and decide what changes to their techniques had to be made in the light of their experience. Gathered around the long trestle table in Stirling’s large tent, the officers smoked like chimneys, drank a lot of whisky or beer, swapped jokes and informal conversation, then eventually got down to serious business.
‘So what was this problem you had coming back, Dirk?’ Captain Stirling asked Lieutenant Greaves.
‘Once we’d completed the raid,’ Greaves told him, ‘we laid up most of that night, then started across the desert the next day. Everything went smoothly – not a German in sight – until, still deep in enemy territory, we were mistaken for an Axis patrol by two of our own Blenheims.’
‘Damn!’ Stirling exploded.
‘They attacked us with their guns,’ Greaves continued, recalling it vividly, with anger, ‘and though I and my two men managed to get out of the lorry in time, one of the Blenheims stitched it with bullets and killed the LRDG driver, Private Purbridge, before we could exchange recognition signals.
‘Bloody rotten luck!’ Lewes exclaimed softly.
‘Those RAF prats!’ Callaghan added with some venom.
Greaves just shrugged his shoulders. ‘When the pilots finally recognized us and flew back where they had come from, we buried Purbridge in the desert. Private Moffatt of L Detachment then took over the driving.’
‘You navigated yourself?’ Lewes asked him.
‘Yes.’
Callaghan gave a low whistle of admiration, then glanced at Lewes. ‘Your training wasn’t in vain, then,’ he said.
‘So what happened next?’ Stirling asked impatiently.
‘Unfortunately,’ Greaves continued, ‘one of the Blenheims had shot up the petrol tank and though we managed to patch it up temporarily, it was losing fuel at an increasing rate and the engine was gradually packing up. As luck would have it, later that day we reached Wadi Faregh, where Brigadier Reid’s Force was passing through to their night laager some 25 miles from the airfield. They fixed us up with another lorry and driver, so finally we made it back here.’
‘An absolutely tragic end to a successful raid,’ Stirling said. ‘My condolences, Dirk.’ He was, however, keen to hear some good news. ‘So how, precisely, did the raid go?’
‘Perfect,’ Greaves said with some pride. ‘The place was heavily guarded and we had difficulty getting in – at least it took a long time – but we didn’t have a single encounter with the enemy while planting our bombs.’
‘The bombs all went off?’ Lewes asked anxiously.
Greaves smiled at him. ‘Perfectly, Jock. A little earlier than planned, but that may have turned out to be a blessing. Certainly Jerry had no time either to remove them or come looking for us. We practically walked away from that airfield as the planes were all blowing up.’
‘All of them?’ Stirling asked.
‘We were two bombs short,’ Greaves said, ‘which made me a little angry. But, as Corporal Clayton pointed out, thirty-five hits out of thirty-seven is no cause for complaint.’
Stirling nodded. ‘Quite right.’
Lewes wasn’t so happy. ‘I’ll have to check the fuses,’ he said of his own invention, the Lewes bombs. ‘Yours weren’t the only ones to go off early.’
‘Right,’ Callaghan said. ‘Ours were set for thirty minutes, but they went off in twenty, nearly accounting for us with the aircraft.’
‘We didn’t even get the chance to try ours,’ Stirling confessed bitterly.
‘Oh, why?’
‘Damned aircraft at Sirte took off before we could launch the raid. All t
hirty of them. Leaving us with all those unused bombs. So,’ he said, changing the subject, ‘what was the success rate?’
‘We got twenty-three planes out of thirty,’ Callaghan said, ‘and only failed to get the rest because we ran short of bombs.’
‘We didn’t get any aircraft at all,’ Lewes confessed, ‘but we destroyed or seriously damaged thirty Axis vehicles.’
‘We got thirty-five out of thirty-seven,’ Greaves said, ‘and like Captain Callaghan’s group, we only failed to hit the others because we ran short of bombs.’
‘Bloody stupid!’ Stirling said angrily. ‘Another example of lack of proper planning and intelligence.’ He drummed his fingers on the table, looking distracted, then had a slug of whisky and perked up. ‘Nevertheless, looking on the bright side, in a single week we destroyed a total of fifty-eight enemy aircraft, thirty enemy vehicles, and one enemy oil-tanker. We also caused a lot of disturbance and kept their troops distracted. Not bad at all, gentlemen!’
Stirling topped up his glass, passed the bottle around the table, then held his glass out in a toast. ‘To the first successes of L Detachment, SAS,’ he said. When the officers had toasted their own success, they drank more whisky, lit up more cigarettes, filled the tent with smoke, and returned to the more serious business of the rights and wrongs of the raids.
‘Any complaints about the LRDG?’ Stirling asked.
‘None,’ Callaghan said.
‘They were perfect,’ Lewes added.
‘No one could have done it better,’ Greaves insisted. ‘They were bloody marvellous.’
‘I concur,’ Stirling said. ‘The failures are all down to us, so we have to address that fact.’
He glanced outside the tent where the other ranks were either bathing in the pools of the oasis or relaxing under the palm trees, drinking and smoking as well, but also reading or writing letters home. The sun was blazing out of a sheer blue sky, making the vast, flat desert look almost white.
‘In future,’ he said, turning back to the officers smoking and drinking around the table, ‘we have to try to avoid the kind of disaster that befell us at Sirte. In order to do this, we have to ensure that we have good intelligence beforehand.’