There was also the hazard of not knowing exactly where they were. The country was, as Sergeant-Major Blair had described it outside Alexandria, just miles and miles of damn all, and the compass was indeed as vital as a gun. While when the wind began to blow, and the sand became stirred into vast clouds, the entire world disappeared into a swirling yellow mist. Then it was a matter of merely keeping the vehicle in front of you in sight, and praying you would not become bogged down. Handkerchiefs were tied across noses and mouths because even with the windows tight shut the sand got inside the vehicles. After one such storm one of the trucks had vanished. Wilkinson halted the advance and sent out a tank patrol, but it returned empty-handed. ‘Poor devils,’ the Colonel commented.
In all of this they were inclined to forget the enemy. He turned up every so often, but usually to surrender. Told to stay where they were until the infantry arrived to take them into custody, the Italians sat by the roadside in contented obedience. There were brief flurries of fighting, when some enemy tanks would attempt to bar their advance, but the Italian armour was too light, and soon, on each occasion, half of them were blazing and the others either fleeing for their lives or waving white flags from their cupolas. ‘Some God damned war,’ Bentley commented.
*
It was important for the army to capture Tobruk, because it was the first really good harbour west of Alexandria, and therefore it could be used by the Royal Navy to supply the troops, a very necessary factor, as they had just about come to the end of their reserves of everything. But Tobruk rapidly became even more important to the rank and file, because in the captured town there were already reserves of everything.
The regiment had been engaged with the last of the retreating Italian armour, west of the town, while the infantry cleaned up the garrison and forced their way into the port itself. Once the white flag was hoisted General O’Connor declared Tobruk out of bounds to any troops not on duty, but it was too late. Fergus discovered, when he came to check up, that although all the tanks were neatly parked, half of their crews were missing.
‘I don’t suppose you can blame the poor devils, but you’d better go and see if you can get them back,’ Wilkinson said.
Fergus took a command car and Sergeant Butler and drove through clouds of smoke from burning oil dumps to the perimeter. They were briefly stopped by military police, but allowed to drive on when Fergus explained his purpose, and soon after came upon a quite fantastic scene. The principal street into the town was named Via Mussolini, but the sign had already been defaced and replaced with ‘Pitt Street’. They passed a hotel, once apparently known as the Albergo Tobruch, which was now named. ‘Young and Jackson’s’. Then they saw a party of Australians, the most remarkable soldiers Fergus had ever beheld, for they marched beneath Italian national and regimental pennants, using their bayonets as flagpoles, while they carried an enormous collection of miscellaneous booty —swords, revolvers, Italian badges, monogrammed ashtrays, sashes and whistles, which last they blew as they saw the officer.
They weren’t his responsibility. He drove on to the centre of the town, where the scene was even more chaotic. For troops limited to bully beef and tea for the past six months, Tobruk was a treasure house. Here were soldiers helping themselves to tinned fruit and fresh vegetables, to two-gallon tins of pulped tomatoes and huge boxes of spaghetti.
There were also, needless to say, women, squealing happily as they ran in and out of doorways, willing the Tommies to follow. Few were slow to do so, but Fergus didn’t suppose there were going to be many cases of rape. And at last he saw some of his own men.
‘Stop the car, Sergeant,’ he told Butler. ‘Let’s round them up.’
‘Why, Major, darling,’ Bert Manly-Smith said. ‘You nearly missed all the fun.’
*
Discipline was restored, and the advance resumed. On Thursday, 30 January Derna fell, but then it was reported that the Italians had dug in outside Benghazi, and that here at last they could expect to fight a proper battle.
‘This is the decisive moment,’ O’Connor told his senior officers. ‘The enemy are aware that we are at the limit of our communications. We will improve on this once the navy gets Tobruk working again, but right now he will hope to counter-attack whenever he judges the moment is right. This we must prevent. We must, indeed, deal him a knockout blow now, while he is still reeling. Now gentle-men, he is retreating along the coast road, to Benghazi, where he is well fortified. He will assume that we will follow in the same way, thus stretching our lines of communication even further. He assumes we have no choice. Well, he is right, as regards our infantry and supply column; the mountains of the Gebel Akhdar guard his inward flank, the sea his outward, and trucks cannot cross the desert. But tanks can. The enemy conceives this to be impossible, because tanks need supplies of petrol, water and food as much as anyone. This is where we are going to surprise him. It is approximately two hundred miles, as the crow flies, from Gazala to Beda Fomm, behind Benghazi. Two hundred miles of desert, but it is south of the Gebel Akhdar. My intention is that the armoured brigade, living on its own, as it were, will cross to Beda Fomm and take the retreating Italians in the rear. Pressed as they will be by our infantry on the coast road, it is my opinion that we may be able to conclude this campaign within the next week.’ He looked over the faces of the tank officers. ‘You understand that there can be no thought of breaking off any action in which you may be engaged, and retreating. You will not have sufficient fuel to regain the main body.’
The Brigadier nodded. ‘We understand that, sir.’
‘Then good hunting.’
*
‘A good, old-fashioned cavalry raid,’ Fergus said. ‘My old man told me about those, in the Boer War.’
‘In the Boer War, a trooper could always eat his horse if he got bogged down,’ Wilkinson pointed out. ‘So we don’t want to make any mistakes.’
The tanks were loaded with every can of petrol for which room could be devised. Each man carried four days’ iron rations in his haversack, and two water bottles; there would be no washing or shaving until the battle was over. The guns were cleaned and greased time and again, as were the engines — because there would be no mechanics, either. But so far the tanks had performed marvellously well.
Then the armoured brigade moved out.
*
They had suffered so few casualties, and managed to avoid so many breakdowns, that there were still some two hundred tanks available. They drove across the desert at a steady fifteen miles per hour, stopping only to fill up. Obviously they could not go into battle with cans of petrol strapped to the outer bodies of the tanks, and so the calculations involved had to be very exact.
They drove into a yellow and brown wilderness, upon which a flawless blue sky glared down. That they could be seen for miles was obvious from the huge sand plumes which rose up from the tracks...but they were relying on the fact that there was no one, for miles, to see them. They stopped again at dusk to refill and eat, and then pressed on into the night, following the glow of the light on the rear of each squadron commander’s tank. Fergus, who had no intention of missing this show, drove with Romerill at the head of C Squadron. They brought up the rear; Wilkinson was in his usual post with Bentley and A Squadron, in front.
After the heat of the day, the chill of the night was a great relief. At two they stopped again, to refill, eat, allow the drivers to stretch their legs and have an hour’s sleep. ‘We’re on schedule,’ said Brigadier Campbell.
Their final stop was made at dawn. The last of the spare petrol was poured into the tanks, before they moved on, dead slow now, both to conserve fuel and to conceal their approach as much as possible.
They rolled up gentle slopes and down others. As the sun came up they saw the bulk of the Gebel Akhdar rising some thirty miles to their north, but they could also see where the hills tailed off to the sea in the west; they had passed round the mountains. And a few minutes later, topping another rise, they looked down on a
sizeable village, from the guarding fortress of which there floated the red, white and green Italian tricolour.
‘Beda Fomm,’ the Brigadier announced over his wireless.
In accordance with previous orders, the brigade now split into regiments; they were not interested in Beda Fomm itself, only in the Italian armour. The dragoons turned more directly north and passed east of the town, which was now certainly awake to the fact that a large armoured force had mysteriously emerged out of the desert. They could hear Italian being chattered over their radios, and the garrison artillery began to open fire, without any effect.
Holding their course just to the west of north, the regiment lost sight of the rest of the brigade, which was making more directly for the coast road to their west, but they were kept informed by radio relays, several tanks being detached to make sure contact between the two wings of the force was maintained. The road was reached by the larger force with the sea now on the left hand for the first time since leaving Egypt.
‘Enemy tanks reported approaching from Benghazi,’ came the word along the relay. ‘Section Three will maintain course and speed.’
‘That’s us,’ Wilkinson told his men.
They were still motoring over the desert at something under ten miles an hour, conserving fuel and their own position as much as possible. If the garrison at Beda Fomm had observed that part of the British force had passed to the east, heading north, the town was now out of sight, and no one could be sure where they were.
Soon they heard the sound of gunfire from the west, and excited chatter came over the radio. ‘There’s one hell of a lot of the bastards,’ was one of the more intelligible remarks. ‘And this time they seem to want to fight.’
‘This time they don’t have anywhere to go, unless they can break through us,’ Wilkinson commented.
Still the regiment held its course and speed, until the order came from Brigade to complete the encirclement: ‘Section Three will swing due west and engage the enemy in its front.’
‘Hooray!’ Romerill shouted.
‘Amen,’ Fergus agreed.
In squadrons, three rows of twenty tanks each, the regiment moved up the next slope and looked down on the coast road. To their left a fierce battle was going on, with British and Italian tanks engaged in a confused melée. To their right were masses of men and trucks, but these were some miles away. Directly in front of them was at least a regiment of fresh Italian tanks, hurrying towards the scene of battle.
‘Regiment will engage,’ Wilkinson said. ‘Our objective is to destroy those fellows.’
The tanks rumbled down the hill. For a few moments the Italians seemed unaware that they were being approached from their flank. Then excited comment and orders flowed across the air, and the tanks swung to meet this new threat.
‘Fire as you bear,’ Wilkinson commanded.
The two-pounders barked, the tanks bucked and roared, and their interiors became over hot, and filled with nostril-blocking odours, from cordite to humanity. ‘Christ, he’s at it again,’ Bert growled as Griffiths started to fart. He knew the fellow wasn’t afraid; it was just his stomach’s reaction to the excitement of action. ‘There’s a bugger,’ he snapped. ‘Line her up, Phil. Line her up. Traverse right, for Christ’s sake. Range three five oh yards. Fire!’
Payne wrestled with the cannon sight, and pressed the button. The tank shuddered, and Bert, peering out through the slats, gave a whoop. ‘Brewed the bastard. Here’s another. Christ, they do mean to fight. Round, Bill. Round for God’s sake.’
Mullings swung the wheel and the tank slewed round, almost in its own length, throwing the men inside about like toys.
‘For Christ’s sake,’ Griffiths complained, nearly dropping the shell he was passing to Payne.
‘Near one,’ Bert said. ‘Hit the bastard, Phil! Hit him.’
The gun roared again, and then there was a funny noise. Bert was not quite sure what it was, because for a few seconds he was unconscious. But he woke up rapidly enough to find his clothes on fire. In fact, he was sitting in the middle of a huge gush of flame. Instinctively he knew that to breathe was to die, and that he was going to die in any event, in a matter of seconds, if he didn’t get out. He looked to his left, at Mullings, and to his right, at Payne. They were already dead. So was Griffiths. But above his head the hatch had been blown away, and there was precious air up there.
Bert released his belt and clawed upwards. His hands touched burning metal and he screamed. But he would not stop, drove himself onwards, and fell down the outside of the tank, using the last of his consciousness to roll over and over in the sand in an attempt to smother the flames consuming his battledress.
*
‘Brew-up!’ Romerill snapped. ‘Got the blighter. Good shooting, Corporal. There’s another...shit, that’s one of ours.’
Fergus peered through the slit, saw the tank in flames, and the number. ‘Five two,’ he said. ‘Christ, that’s Manly-Smith.’ He watched in horror as a body emerged from the cupola and half rolled, half fell on to the sand, where it kept on rolling. Bert Manly-Smith!
‘Poor beggar,’ Romerill commented. ‘Hard a-starboard. Here’s another.’
The tank turned so abruptly it came to a screaming halt, and stalled. Desperately the driver tried to re-start, but although the engine turned over it wouldn’t tick.
‘Flooded,’ the Corporal said tersely.
‘And we’re sitting ducks,’ Romerill growled. ‘Hit that fellow, Corporal.’
The gun roared, and Fergus released his seat belt. ‘I’ll be right back,’ he said, and threw up the hatch.
‘Sir?’ Romerill inquired, looking up. ‘Major, for God’s sake…’
But Fergus was already out of the cupola and sliding down the outside of the tank. As he did so the engine restarted, and the vehicle began to move.
‘Major!’ Romerill bellowed, but Fergus stepped aside. Now he could look left and right. He had never been in the middle of a tank battle before — except inside a tank. The scene reminded him of something from a science fiction novel gone mad, a contest between monsters on the moon, perhaps. So much sand, overlaid by smoke, was swirling to and fro that visibility was down to less than fifty yards. In and out of this almost solid fog huge shapes emerged, belching flame, and then disappeared again, while all around him the enormous combined roar of their guns and their engines seemed to seal off this part of the world from any other.
But within sight was the burning Crusader. And a few feet beyond it the also glowing body of the one man to emerge. Fergus flung himself forward as he heard the roar of a gun, reminding himself that if he could hear it he was still alive, rolled across the sand, and came up to Bert. He hurled himself on top of the boy, careless of the flames, and rolled them both to and fro in the sand. Dimly he heard a roaring very close, and looked up to see an Italian tank passing only a few feet to his left. He wondered what it would be like to be squashed by a tank? Presumably one wouldn’t have time to feel much. But identifying the body would be a problem.
The flames were out, and Bert was alternately groaning and screaming. Fergus rose to his feet, carrying the injured man in his arms, looked left and right. Some time while he had been on the ground the Crusader had exploded as the flames had reached its petrol tank, and now it burned merrily, giving off a tremendous heat but providing some shelter from the holocaust surrounding him. He decided his best plan was to stay close to it until he recognized someone, although that had to be pretty soon, or Bert would die. Then he saw No. 41 reappearing through the murk.
‘Thank God!’ he shouted, and waved one arm.
The tank slewed to a halt beside him; the hatch was still open. ‘Take him in,’ Fergus gasped. ‘But easy. His clothes are burned to his body.’
Romerill and one of the crew came out to take Bert in. ‘That was an incredibly brave thing to have done, sir,’ Romerill said. ‘You could’ve been killed.’
‘I hadn’t expected you to get going again so quickly,’ Fer
gus confessed. ‘What’s happening?’
Because the noise had slightly diminished, and the sand and smoke haze was starting to clear.
‘I think they’re pulling out,’ Romerill told him. ‘But Major...the Colonel has brewed up.’
*
General O’Connor surveyed the officers gathered in what had been the Italian Officers’ Club in Benghazi. ‘I am sure you would all like to know the final tally,’ he said. ‘Well, gentlemen, to speak in round figures, we have taken one hundred and thirty three thousand Italian prisoners, four hundred tanks, and eight hundred and fifty guns. I think we may claim that the Italian Army has effectively been destroyed as a fighting force. This has been achieved as at loss to ourselves of five hundred and fifty men dead and missing, just over twice that number wounded, and ten tanks.’
He paused to allow his words to sink in, and someone shouted, ‘Three cheers for General O’Connor!’
They roared their approval, and the General smiled; he knew that it had been his leadership, and especially his decision to send his armour across the desert to enclose the enemy in the jaws of a pincer, that had truly made the difference. ‘Thank you, gentlemen. I would only like to say that I am proud to have led you. And even prouder to say that, now that our advance units have taken El Agheila, all Cyrenaica is ours.’
‘When do we invade Tripolitania, sir?’ someone asked.
‘Give us time, Major. Give us time. We need to replenish in a big way. We need to get Tobruk in full working order as a port. We will invade Tripolitania, no doubt about that. But when we are ready. Thank you, gentlemen. Major Mackinder, a word if you will.’
Fergus moved forward through the other officers, brain spinning; he still had not come to terms with the fact that Johnny Wilkinson was dead. Bentley had survived, wounded, and had told him that the Colonel had died as he had lived: his last words after the tank was hit had been, ‘My word, those fellows can shoot, after all.’
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