Chapter 4

We were getting ready to attack Tobruk, harassing the enemy in the night using the Bren guns and a navy bombardment was coming to soften up the Italian defences. There was still some light when we parked up in the carriers. To one side of the track was a cliff, perhaps fifty feet high. Looking the other way, we could see the Mediterranean.

Instinct is a fine thing in war and it is usually wise to heed it. I had a strange feeling and suggested that we should move the carriers further along the road. Minutes later there was a deafening blast, sending shock waves through the carriers and everyone in them. The sound rumbled around, reverberating off the rocks and our ears were left squealing with that high-pitched sound you get after an explosion. Our language was unrepeatable. The Royal Navy could deliver a devastating punch and you were better out of the way when it did. Their opening shot had fallen close to where we had been just minutes before.

Normally I’d have said to myself, ‘A miss is as good as a mile’, but that was just the first shell and a naval bombardment is not something to witness at close quarters. Before the dust settled I slammed the carrier into gear and we were on the move. It was just as well because another friendly shell thumped into the rock face close behind us. We didn’t stop.

The attack began early in the morning with the Australians hitting the defences from the south. We could see thick black smoke coming from the docks where the Italians had set fire to oil tanks. Their cruiser, the San Giorgio, was in the harbour after being badly damaged by the RAF. They beached her and set her on fire as well.

One of our officers, Tom Bird, broke through the defences with the ‘S’ Company carriers, capturing scores of guns, 2,000 prisoners and, best of all, the contents of an Italian officers’ mess. The tanks came in behind him and white flags started appearing everywhere. They took more than 25,000 prisoners in Tobruk, but ‘Electric Whiskers’ wasn’t one of them. He’d slipped away again.

The Italians had done a lot of damage to the harbour but the best news was there was lots of water in the reservoirs to quench our thirst.

Now Tobruk had fallen we could return to our nomadic ways and around then I got to know one of our best officers, 2nd Lieutenant Mike Mosley. It didn’t start well. I was driving a truck with him in the passenger seat when we hit soft sand and the wheels started spinning hopelessly. We were soon up to the axles and going nowhere fast. He wasn’t exactly pleased.

‘Didn’t you see it?’ he asked. ‘What kind of a driver are you, Avey? You’re supposed to look where you’re going.’

I was stung. I didn’t take comments like that from anyone, officer or not. I fancied I was a good driver and the snipe was worse coming from an officer I really respected. I bit my lip and that was rare in those days. With Mosley looking on, we began digging the truck out, laying out the perforated metal sand-trays to give the tyres something to bite on and we were soon back on the road.

I usually drove a Bren gun carrier. Someone had spotted I was a handy mechanic. The carriers were nippy enough, you could get nearly 40 mph out of them and despite their clunky tracks and their armour plate, they were manoeuvrable. You steered with fine movements of the wheel. Turn left to brake the left track and you pivoted round it, turn the wheel right and you did the opposite.

A bit later we were on a dusty hillside. A lengthy column of trucks had parked up along an escarpment track, pressed tightly against the uphill side of the road. The other edge was marked by a drop sheer enough to make you queasy.

Mike Mosley spotted me in my carrier. ‘Take me along the column and back,’ he said, climbing in and standing bolt upright in the commander’s seat. He obviously wanted to be seen by the troops as if he was expecting to take a drive-by salute. My chance had come. I turned the switch to bring on the ignition light and pressed the starter button. The V-8 engine spluttered into life. I slammed it into gear and slithered off. I was soon accelerating without mercy as Mosley hung on to the armour plating trying to keep his breakfast down and staring into the void. With just twelve inches to spare on each side I reached full speed with my eyes fixed on the narrow track and Mosley looking increasingly green around the gills. A minor flick of the wheel would have locked one of the tracks and we’d have been airborne. It put the wind up him all right. I turned at the end of the column and repeated the trick before the clouds of dust from the first pass had settled. He climbed out, just managing a stifled thank you. ‘Touché,’ I said to myself. I’d made my point. He was pretty civil after that.

‘B’ Company was under the command of Major Viscount Hugo Garmoyle and we were sent ahead of the rest of the battalion. We were behind the tanks, heading across the desert on the way to Benghazi, the next big target. The landscape became increasingly barren the further we got from the sea. Fifty miles inland, vegetation was sparse, the landscape was dry and stony with patches of reddish sift-sand, occasional hills and deep depressions or nullahs that had been scoured into the landscape.

It was good to be alongside Les again for the first time since getting out on the blue. As a Lance-Sergeant he was the carrier commander. He got things done and he trusted me. Not even the desert sores, terrible grub and lack of proper sleep dented his humour. He was still sharp.

On the evening of 23 January the armour ahead of us got into a major duffy with the Italians on the track to Mechili. They were up against seventy tanks, who put up quite a fight. Our lot knocked out nine of theirs but we paid a hefty price. It was all over when we caught up. The Italian tanks were smashed and left littered across the desert. Heaven help anyone in there, I thought to myself looking at a burnt-out Italian M13. Their armour was like cheese. Those inside had simply fried.

One of the others had clambered on to an M13 which at first glance didn’t look as badly damaged. ‘Oh my God, look at this. There’s someone alive in this one,’ he said. The soldier was standing at the side of the turret and he had one hand on the stubby barrel, staring through the hatch, unable to pull himself away.

I swung up under the gun and looked in. The tank commander was inside and still sitting down. His guts were spread out, dark and crimson all across his lap. He moved just slightly. It would have been ridiculous to try to lift him out. He would have been in agony and he wasn’t going to live long anyway.

For a moment I was seventeen years old again and back in Essex. I was on a pheasant shoot with my father and his friends. We were walking with the dogs bounding around us in the deep undergrowth. I was enjoying the warm weather and the adult company. There was a distant flapping as one of the dogs put a cock pheasant to flight a hundred yards away. I raised the shotgun and fired the barrel with the chokebore to get the range, feeling the recoil in my shoulder. I watched the bird come down and knew I’d killed it. The dogs retrieved it and I tramped back through the long grass to the party, holding it aloft by the tail feathers, beaming proudly. But when I saw my father’s face I knew instantly something was wrong.

‘I suppose you think that was a good shot,’ he said.

‘Yes, I do,’ I replied.

‘Well it wasn’t, I can tell you. At that distance it was purely accidental.’

I knew better than to protest.

‘You could have wounded that bird at that range and it would have been in pain for days. Now get off the shoot.’

My father had always taught me to respect people and animals but I was humiliated in front of all those men. He was right, of course, but I hated it at the time. I turned and left in shame.

Now, not many years later, I was standing on an Italian tank looking down on a man who had been an enemy but was now a suffering human being with no prospect of life.

I never saw his face, thankfully, but I raised my weapon and did what I thought was right. I was reported for that and I had to go and speak to a senior officer later that day. He was sitting on a pile of wooden boxes. He wanted to hear the whole story and, as a seasoned soldier, I think he understood. No more was said about it.

I decided not to sleep below the carrier that night and dug my usual grave-shaped sand bed away from the vehicles but still safely within the leaguer. I checked my weapons and turned in along with the rest – no hearty campfires of brothers in arms below a desert sky, just dog-tired men sleeping in the sand.

In the desert I always slept with my ears cocked. The slightest unfamiliar noise and I was there, alert and ready. It got worse the more patrols I did. I knew how easy it was to slip into a camp undetected at night; to move around in the shadows, smelling the domestic smells, even hearing ‘O Sole Mio’ sung by men who felt completely safe. I also knew that a soldier entering an enemy camp at night would be fired up, ready to kill to escape. He’d do what I had done.

It was the miserable sound of rain that woke me. I fumbled around in the wet, dark sand until my hands settled on the cold, knobbly metal of the Mills bombs and breathed a little easier. The Beretta was still under my arm and the .38 was in reach. Prepared, I drifted back into a sort of sleep listening to the patter of rain and the distant sound of snoring. Later I woke shivering, with an unexpected weight pressing down on me. The bedroll was stiff and I could barely move. It was covered in ice.

Next, it was on to Fort Mechili. We meant to cut off the Italians but we just missed them. Our maps weren’t up to much and they found a way out on a track we didn’t know about. They had abandoned the whole position overnight leaving vehicles and stores behind. Once again they were retreating.

These long journeys in a carrier were not pleasant. It was open to the elements. The driver’s seat could be dropped in combat so you were below the armour plating but you were fully exposed when driving and the drag created a vacuum, pulling airborne sand in around you and coating everything. We were close to Fort Mechili when a violent khamsin whipped up from nowhere. It would be bully-beef and gravel for dinner as usual.

The convoy pulled up for a break and before I could get out Eddie Richardson was alongside.

‘You won’t get into Shepheard’s looking like that, old chap,’ he said.

The sand glued to my cheeks cracked as I smiled. I climbed out, flicked the dust from my stiff hair using both hands, took a swig of waxy water and went to work. The tracks on a Bren carrier needed a lot of attention, especially on stony ground. I began by checking the pivot pins that linked each segment of the tracks together. A carrier without its tracks was a sitting target, so any doubts and I would swap them. I’d knock out the old pin using a heavy hammer and bash in the replacement, chasing the old one out. It would be good for a few more miles.

On 28 January we settled down to hold the fort and maintain the carriers, and the rest of 2RB caught up with us a few days later. They’d had a bit of a time with the Italian air force, with fighters strafing them and a few very near misses from bombers. They were told they could have a breather, and that we wouldn’t have to move again for the best part of two weeks.

That was a good joke as it turned out. Two weeks turned out to be more like two hours.

The trucks had their bonnets up, the lads were washing and shaving. Some of the officers had gone on leave or were getting ready to go. That was when the big cheese, General ‘Jumbo’ Wilson, arrived. The buzz soon spread. Something big was happening. The RAF had spotted long columns of enemy leaving Benghazi and the top brass guessed rightly the Italians were quitting the whole area, leaving Cyrenaica. We were well inland, in the middle of a bulge of Africa sticking up north into the Mediterranean. The Italians were departing down the left-hand coast of that bulge. A hundred and fifty miles of desert lay between them and us. A bold strike could deliver a decisive blow but it was a journey, we were told later, that not even camel trains would attempt. We grabbed what sleep we could.

It was a race. At first light, engines spluttered and the column began to roll, tanks, armoured cars, trucks and the carriers in a long line, spread out against air attack. If the whole Italian army was really on the move, we would still be heavily outnumbered even if we got there in time to block their way. That first eighty miles was purgatory. It was a forbidding landscape scattered with slab-rocks and scoured with wadis and hidden patches of sift-sand. If you drifted into one of those you’d be there until next Christmas. Tracked vehicles like the one I was driving were bucking and rearing over the boulders, ditches and camels humps, constantly at risk of shedding a track. I replaced at least twelve pins to keep the carrier rolling on that journey alone. It was imperative to look after it. No feet, no horse, as simple as that. All our vehicles were long overdue for proper repair. The light tanks kept breaking down and had to be left behind with their crews, hoping for recovery.

The weather was making it hard too. Visibility was terrible in the endless blast of sand and dust, then we would run into an icy rain storm. The commanders got the worst of it, standing in the backs of trucks like desert mariners, frozen stiff. We were soon running dangerously short of fuel. At the best of times the carriers did five miles to a gallon. On this bad ground it was more like one or two and the crashing around was springing leaks in our spare cans. If the fuel tanks got close to empty, the dregs of sand in the bottom would be sucked into the carburettor and we would shudder to a halt. We were running short of water too, getting by on just a glass per man per day.

Near Msus, sixty or seventy miles from the coast, the column closed up. Our aircraft had run out of spare engines, but one single working Hurricane reported a long column of Italian vehicles heading south from Benghazi.

We were given new orders. The tanks and carriers couldn’t travel fast enough. They quickly put together a special force in the faster vehicles to race south-west and block the Italians’ way. Two thousand of us were chosen for this ‘Combeforce’, commanded by Lieutenant-Colonel John Combe of the 11th Hussars. We left the carriers behind to follow up later.

I picked up belts of ammunition and my bedroll and I climbed into the back of the nearest truck, leaving everything else behind in the carrier. By 1300 hours we were rolling again, this time more quickly.

We had to stop at nightfall because the Italians had spread thermos bombs across our path. They were nasty little cylinders shaped like a vacuum flask but they were no picnic. We were moving again by sunrise, tearing along on a compass course to cut the road at Sidi Saleh, engines boiling. The desert was giving way to a more forgiving landscape, with a little more greenery and signs of cultivation. We were emerging from the wilderness into what had once been the granary of the Roman Empire.

Three Italian fighters dropped out of the sky at a brief rest halt, machine guns blazing. We hit the ground but the scream of propeller engines soon became a distant drone. They had achieved nothing but someone knew we were here. Given that the dash had been designed to take the Italians by surprise, it was worrying.

In the early afternoon, about 1400 hours, we reached the road near the derelict village of Beda Fomm. In almost a day and a half we had covered around 160 miles over some of the roughest ground the desert could throw at us. Not only that, we could see nothing coming from the north. We had got there before the Italians but, as it turned out, only just.

The road ran through sandy ground with low ridges running north–south. The sea and the coastal dunes were two miles to our west. We were working hard to get the guns deployed across both sides of the road. Captain Tom Pearson was in charge and he began to lay a minefield. We barely had time to dig in before the enemy showed up in force.

The first Italians came into view and imagine how they felt. They thought the nearest enemy was at least a hundred miles away so they were convinced the vehicles ahead of them must be friendly until our artillery opened up. It was a complete shock. They careered off the road, trying to get out of harm’s way, and then the fighting really began. They outnumbered us by a huge margin but luckily they didn’t know that. They launched some wild attacks and we threw them back each time but more and more of them were coming down the road.

Late in the afternoon, our armour caught up, peeling off to attack to the north of us, halfway down the long Italian column. There were burning Italian vehicles everywhere by the time dusk fell and we had already taken a thousand prisoners but there were more Italians arriving all the time. What we didn’t know then was that ‘Electric Whiskers’ was in the column and he’d been given orders to break out of the trap. He should have been able to, because it wasn’t great territory for such an unbalanced battle, with flat terrain spreading out both sides of our roadblock. Our orders were clear: the Italians must not be allowed to break through between the road and the sea.

Tom Pearson was one our best officers and he knew we had to convince the Italians there were far more of us out there in the darkness or they would drive straight round us. In the evening, he decided to send out a harassing force right along the Italian column.

Mike Mosley took two platoons including mine, and a small section of artillery to do the job. I was relieved to be going into battle with Mosley. He was a bit of an enigma, a bishop’s only son who had himself been heading for the church until the war came along. A naturally curious man and a brilliant soldier, he didn’t have a fear in his body in battle. Since I had given him a fright in the carrier, I felt the slate had been wiped clean. I trusted him as much as any officer. That night he was to win the Military Cross.

I locked the side handle on the Bren, checked the curved magazine and climbed into the back of the nearest truck. Mosley clambered up after me, pulled out his revolver, gave a bang on the roof of the cab and we lurched off in the dark.

It must have been about midnight when the drone of engine exhausts told us another column was approaching from the north. My night vision was starting to kick in and we could make out the outline of trucks, tanks and big guns about 250 yards away in the night. There were 200 vehicles or more, stretching way back along the track. There weren’t nearly enough of us to stop them breaking out, so we began to create an illusion.

I aimed my Bren low to allow for the recoil which always lifted it up and over the target. You had to force it down with pressure on the side handle. Mosley pointed at the target with his revolver and gave the order, ‘Bursts of five, when you’re ready.’

It was pretty accurate at that range. The flames engulfed the first trucks quickly and those behind were caught in the orange light making them easier targets. In seconds, shadowy figures were running into the sand beyond.

Our bigger guns began barking explosive shells towards the enemy and we moved off down the column; sometimes stopping to aim, often just firing on the move. Some gunners liked to spray bullets wildly. I never fired more than five in a batch; I didn’t need to. We’d put the occasional tracer bullet in to see how we were doing and we would see them arcing over in the darkness.

That column was the best part of three miles long and we brought it to a halt. When we got to the end, we spun around and prepared to cause more trouble on the return journey. They were firing back, of course, but not having much joy. We kept it up for three hours but a couple of our trucks were in trouble, so we had to head back for repairs. We were getting short of food and ammunition. There was a squally wind with bursts of heavy rain so you often couldn’t see much. The artillery couldn’t move because the armour needed all the petrol and some of the guns only had thirty rounds left each.

The Italians weren’t giving up. It went on all that day, with sporadic attacks, gunfights and blown-up vehicles everywhere with soldiers crouched behind them. The CO of our headquarters company arrived during an uncharacteristic lull and decided what we most needed was a mess tent, so he put up a big white marquee right by us. What a silly arse. It made a beautiful target and Italian shells started arriving immediately. The main battle was now three miles north where our tanks were attacking the Italians on the road round the hill we called ‘the Pimple’. We were the ‘longstop’, the cork in the bottle, and they kept trying to break through.

We were getting more and more stretched. A group of Italian tanks was heading straight for battalion headquarters and we only stopped them a hundred yards short. White flags began appearing and by the end of the day about 10,000 prisoners had been taken but the rest still kept attacking.

Somewhere out in the dunes towards the sea, one of our NCOs, Platoon Sergeant-Major Jarvis, was guarding 500 prisoners with the help of Rifleman Gillan. They saw two big Italian tanks coming so they decided to rush them, two men on foot against tanks. The Italian prisoners, seeing a chance to escape, joined the rush and the puzzled Italian officer in the leading tank opened his turret hatch to see what was going on. Jarvis clubbed him on the head with his rifle then fired in through the slits and the crew surrendered. Gillan did much the same with the other tank and they captured both of them. They both got the DCM for that but when an officer congratulated them, Jarvis just replied, ‘Yes, it was all right, sir, because the rifleman and me had a nice, warm place to spend the night.’

In the darkness, we could hear the rumble of heavy vehicle engines. It was clear they were planning something. Just before dawn we spotted them. A large force headed by thirty tanks was approaching the roadblock where it dispersed quickly as if to surround the barrier. It was their last all-out throw of the dice and when they broke through our forward positions, it looked like it might work. The lads had no choice but to drop back. We had eleven anti-tank guns left at the start and as we knocked out the tanks, they were knocking out our guns. The story goes that in the end we had just one gun working and the crew of that gun accounted for five tanks with their last five rounds. I’m not sure it was quite that close but that last Italian tank got to within twenty yards of our HQ tent before we stopped it.

We dealt with the infantry following the armour and by that time, everyone could hear our tanks coming from the north to join in. White flags began appearing along the road and Italian soldiers started to emerge, many no doubt glad it was all over. I kept some pressure on the trigger. It could still turn nasty. Later we heard of an officer who had been attacked with an axe by a prisoner who had already surrendered. It paid to be cautious.

The man was walking alongside the column when I saw him, past burnt-out trucks and hideously distorted tanks. More Italian soldiers with white flags appeared as he passed by. There are different accounts but I can still see him wearing a long cape open at the front. There were the occasional flashes of his uniform underneath and you could see he had more gold braid on him than Soft Mick. General Annibale Bergonzoli, ‘Electric Whiskers’ himself, was surrendering. He had escaped Bardia and Tobruk but he was now in our hands along with a clutch of other generals.

As his dusty cape parted I noticed that he still had what looked like a small ivory-handled automatic pistol on him. I stepped forward and gestured towards the gun at his side. He stared at me defiantly, he knew what I wanted. Hardly pausing, he patted the tiny weapon with his right hand and then wagged his finger. I understood straight away. He was not giving up his pistol and surrendering formally to anyone less than an officer. I stood aside and waved him on in their direction. I believe it was Captain Tom Pearson who finally got it off him.

And that was the battle of Beda Fomm. In just a couple of months we had taken a 130,000 prisoners. Our breathless race across the desert had allowed us to finish off the Italian 10th Army entirely, but there was no jubilation in our camp, only relief.

Two days after the shooting stopped I picked my way through the tangled metal and twisted carcasses of vehicles. The danger that had kept me alert and focused during battle was gone. Mangled bodies were scattered around in the dust already attracting flies. There were severed arms and legs spread out over a wide area, cut off by explosives or even concentrated machine gun fire. Wounded Italians were propped up against odd-looking rocks like gateposts. There was a solitary tree. Most of the injured had been taken away but some were still lying in the dirt, too weak to groan. It was a ghastly situation.

Everyone copes in his own way, I suppose. I ran into Mike Mosley again. The great war hero was mooching around amongst the sand dunes staring at the ground. He straightened his back and came across to me.

‘Do you know, Avey,’ he said, ‘I’ve found no less that twelve species of wildflower in this little patch of sand alone. Amazing.’