LOCATION
Advance H.Q. 201st Guards Brigade, Fort Pilistrino, TOBRUK [Libya, North Africa]
It’s 0500 hours and stand-to. The morning is one of a million in the desert; cold and still, except to our left centre where Jerry is commencing his early morning ‘Strafe’. Gun flashes grow dimmer as the morning brightens. Nothing to get excited about. We have been cut off and impressed here for 10 days now, and didn’t we hold TOBRUK against all comers in ’41?
We stand-down. It’s full light now with the sun doing its steady climb getting hotter every second. Off come our greatcoats, there are no parachutists this morning but the shelling is getting heavier and more continuous.
Breakfast goes on with a real battle in full violence about 2 or 3 miles in front. The tinned bacon and sausage is hardly eaten, when up roll Slap Happy Herman’s Boys [Herman Goering] to take a hand in the fun. This is getting a bit serious, it isn’t, after all, a half-hearted patrol for testing our defences, but a full blooded ‘Putsch’ [push] to overwhelm us. The bombers are up above now. Swish– out tumble the bombs. They seem to leave the planes ever so slowly as if they are reluctant to do so. But there is no reluctance about them when they hit the deck. One bomb one plane, they certainly mean to blast us out this time.
The C.O. [Commanding Officer] comes dashing up yelling “Shoot down these bloody Stukas.” No one reminds him that they are J.U. 52’s [Junker 52’s], we are far too engrossed in the business. Bofars [light artillery piece], brens [small machine gun] & small arms fire are tearing up in streams, but those JU pilots stick to their jobs in face of everything we can dish out.
The ground is shaking like a well set blancmange, columns of dust and sand are flung hundreds of feet high by the bursting bombs. The courage and audacity of the German Pilots is amazing, in face of our ground fire. They still continue to push home their attack from four to five hundred feet altitude.
Everyone is quite cool and the nonchalant pose of our section sergeant is almost comic, as he lolls against a water drum, left elbow on top and with legs elegantly crossed, firing away at the planes with his S.M.L.E. [Short Magazine Lee Enfield – a .303 rifle]. The planes continue to do their job and then retire. They’ll be back again very soon. El Adem Airdrome is being used by the Luftwaffe boys and this is only about 10 miles from us. I just keep thinking “Oh, for a squadron of Spitfires or Hurricanes to sort these blighters out”. It’s a forlorn hope I know, for the nearest British force is 200 miles East and probably our nearest Air Field is by this time the other side of the Nile.
Another wave of planes arrives and the infernal din begins again. It’s getting nasty, the sun is scorching and the sand and dust is choking. They withdraw again. Our retaliation didn’t seem as strong that time. No air support, that’s it. Not a single bloody fighter. But perhaps they’ve had enough today, six hours is a longish spell. I know this is not true but one seeks some consolation.
We start to get the dinner going. M & V [meat and vegetable] in an old petrol can sawn in half on a fire of sand & petrol. Looking round I can see tanks moving slowly forward a few yards at a time. They’re Jerry’s right enough and only a few Honeys [light tanks] & Anti tank Guns to oppose them. They’ve broken in. Slap Happy’s boys have done the job good & proper this time. Nevertheless in the words of the politicians, “there is no cause for alarm”. They had broken in before only to be thrown out again. But where are our heavy tanks? 1 Ton Honeys are positively useless against Mark IVs [German tank]. Quite a few shells are floating around now, A.P.’s [armour piercing] come bouncing along the ‘deck’ kicking up a cloud of dust each time they strike. They’re keeping us hopping a bit. These A.P.’s although non explosive are not to be trifled with. If they hit you they don’t stop.
It looks as if they’re sorting us out for a ‘blitz’. HE.’s [high explosives] are bursting all around us. We must keep cover now. The whines and cracks of H.E.’s give you no time to dither.
But what about dinner, we’re still hungry & our M & V is cooking away merrily about 10 yards from us. We must crawl out and rescue it. Heavy machine guns sweeping across us. To hell with the dinner, back again head first into the trench. Jerry is 800 yards away. Well I guess that makes our dinner a bit later still. It is already 1400 hours (2pm).
We are reduced to a bit of AA [ack-ack – anti aircraft] fire with rifles and brens. We are four in this trench, two guardsmen, a radio operator & myself. Our signals office is still functioning, in an old Italian dug out, but we have been out of touch with the battalions for some hours and the position to say the least is a trifle obscure.
One or two Honeys [tanks] are still giving battle to the Mark IVs to our front. 7 tonners with 2 pounders against 30 tonners with 6 pounders. It’s deadly, simply suicidal. One of our tanks is hit and bursts into an inferno of flame, hardly half a dozen yards from us. Our artillery does not reply. We are fighting tanks with small arms rifles & brens. All we can do is to bob up and take pot shots at the tank commanders as they open up the turrets to take a look around.
In return we are greeted with a burst of heavy machine gun fire and a few rounds of H.E. thrown in. My truck is riddled with bullets but the engine isn’t touched, the truck having been dug in nose down. We are pinned to the ground. An H.E. crashes into the parapet a couple of yards away and knocks over two of our operators. We have to use our field dressings to bandage them up.
Things are getting a bit too warm on this particular spot of desert, but the sun is sinking slowly. If only the tanks stay outside our wire until dark we may get out of it. They must think there is a mine field between our two lines of barbed wire, and just squat outside and rake us with fire at intervals to keep us quiet. We daren’t raise our heads for more than a few seconds now.
Another couple of hours, if the infantry (German) can’t get up we might get out. I don’t feel scared just almighty dazed and bewildered. I am thinking that perhaps Tobruk might fall this time. I think that this is perhaps death and the end of everything. The feeling of impotence is crushing.
Some lorries career up to the tanks they have huge red white & black Swastika flags over the bonnets. A German officer approaches us under a flag of truce. Our Brigadier is on top now. So we have surrendered, what a pity, only half an hour to sunset and still no dinner.
At 2200 hours the town officially capitulated but the engineers did a good job of work demolishing dumps & harbour installations. The explosions and fires were simply colossal. As we lay in the desert, prisoners of the Germans, the flashes of explosions made the black desert night as light as day, and the flames and black column of smoke from the petrol dump reached right up to the very stars. I wrapped my single blanket around me and went quickly to sleep.
The fighting continued all that night and the next day on the El Gazalla front to the west of the town, where the Camerons were putting up a magnificent show until they were finally forced to surrender through lack of supplies & ammunition. There were many Liverpool lads among the Camerons, the battalion having been reinforced by the Liverpool Scottish. On Monday the survivors marched into the compound to skirl [ sound] of the bagpipes. I could still feel proud to be British.
It was not very long before I realised some of the trials attendant to prisoners of war. My water bottle was useless having been pierced by shrapnel and I had no food whatsoever. The Germans worked hard to get water to us which was issued at 1 pint per man per day. A pint of water per day, what misers we became, missing our rapidly diminishing ration in our laps, hardly daring to take our eyes from it. One feels that it is impossible to survive on so little water and the salient or rather the only thought in our minds is to get to some water and then we are sure of life and everything. What fools we were then, to think of water alone as the sustainer of life.
We were reduced to iron rations of 1 small packet of biscuits & a tin of bully beef per man per day. Following the theft of some water, the Germans reduced our ration to four small biscuits & one quarter of a tin of bully. This meant that the total weight of food for one day was 5oz. (2oz. of biscuit and 3oz. meat). The sun was blazing hot, day after day, there was no shade for the thousands of us who lay sprawled out on that sandy waste. We were weakening fast. More often than not our water was 10% diesel oil. It having been carried in old oil drums. One day I found an old petrol can with about a quart of black dirty water which with the aid of some tea leaves was made into a brew of tea. It must have been a real witches’ brew but tasted mighty like nectar at the time.