大象传媒

This story was submitted to the People鈥檚 War site by Roger Marsh of the 鈥楢ction Desk 鈥� Sheffield鈥� Team on behalf of Harry Wood and has been added to the site with the author's permission. The author fully understands the site's terms and conditions.

MEMOIRS OF A GUNNER
BY
HARRY WOOD

Chapter 3

It was December now, Jerry was still pulling back and we were miles away from the action. Supplies were a big problem, as only one road existed, that was the coast road that ran 1,500 miles from Alexandria in the East all the way to Tunisia. We had a visit from our DIV concert party to relieve the boredom, but water was no longer a problem. Our blankets should have been changed; 12 months with the same blankets was bringing more skin problems. No one seemed aware of times and dates so it came as a surprise to realise how close Christmas was.

December 25th arrived, and as I sat on a petrol tin eating a bit of tinned turkey, my thoughts went back to all at home. There was a bottle of Canadian beer to share between two men and all of us knew that priority was given to petrol and ammo for the forward troops. Benghazi was now in use as a port, but a terrific storm in the Mediterranean sunk several ships, so that meant emergency movement of supplies from the railhead of Tobruk to Benghazi 300 miles away. Every three tonner was pressed into service and I was detailed for this important yet boring job. Loading up with petrol cans we covered about 100 miles each day in convoy, pulled off the road, brewed up, opened a tin of meat and veg, and kipped down for the night.

On the third run it was my turn, to break down, again. This time, it was a broken halfshaft.
Heavy breakdown trucks travelled with the convoy and this time I was given a suspended tow to a derelict building down a track, that ran at right angles to the road. These buildings had once housed Italian peasants after Mussolini had conquered Libya and colonised it. No windows or doors, just a four-roomed shell. I prepared to spend the night here, knowing the REME blokes would come back next morning for me. It was getting dark, nothing moved on the main road so I balanced my stretcher on four petrol tins, made a cup of tea and tried to sleep. There was a full moon so I could see pretty clearly, and then the silence was broken by a pinging sound from the direction of the 3-tonner. Shoving a round up the spout I crept outside and circled the load of petrol cans under its camouflaged protection. What a relief to find the cause of my nervousness was the tins contracting in the cold desert air after the heat of the day. Another truck arrived the next morning, and after transferring the load, I was on my way, taking up with another convoy.

My problem was that the sores on my face weren鈥檛 improving, so I had to go sick. 鈥淚mpetigo,鈥� said the M.O. and into hospital just outside a village called Barce I went.
Large, red crossed marked marquees were set up in this Old Italian army barracks, but I had to report to the RAMC Sergeant initially. Soldiers with all kinds of skin complaints were housed in the stables in appalling conditions.

We slept on wooden planks, inches from the floor with three blankets per man.
The toilet was a couple of holes in the floor, but we were separated from the twelve or so VD patients. They were treated like lepers, by everybody, having to eat separately and their treatment in pre-penicillin times can be imagined. My treatment consisted of tincture of violet painted on the affected parts, and an orderly using tweezers to pull of the scab the next day. A fortnight elapsed when we had an inspection by the senior nursing officer, and the first female I had seen since August - six months ago. She was shocked with our conditions and within two or three hours, we had been moved into a hospital bed with clean sheets, showers and dining hall to use with good food etc. but as I was getting better now, three days of this dream like existence ended and I once more was on my way back to the unit.

We were on the move again, slithering and sliding at times through muddy areas of desert after the rains, heaving guns stuck in the mud and relieving the tedium by snake hunting. They coiled up on roads to dry out after a rainstorm so we hunted them with bayonets. Fortunately no one was bitten.

In places the desert actually bloomed. After a heavy downpour flowers popped up almost overnight, the colour made a pleasant change from the normal barren-like landscape. Around Benghazi were the salt flats, seawater being channelled in, allowed to filter in the sand and the hot sun did the rest.

All the natives had to do was shovel up the salt.

Moving down the coast road, we passed under a magnificent construction called
Marble Arch. Some years ago two Arab chieftains had a boundary squabble and to settle the argument, a runner was sent from each tribe covering many miles and where they met was to be determined as the boundary. One runner was far superior to the other and covered such a great distance, giving his master more land. When they eventually met, the lesser one accused the other of cheating and knives were drawn. In the ensuing combat, both men died and when Mussolini colonised this part of Libya, he had this Marble Arch memorial built as a tribute.

The miles passed by, we made a brief halt at Tripoli, the capital city to take on supplies, petrol, ammo, etc. and a welcome batch of letters from home. We were now allowed a one-page letter per week that was photostatted, so thousands could be sent back to the UK in one plane and this was much quicker, and a big improvement.
Rommel had now dug in behind the Mareth Line on the borders of Tunisia.
This was a concrete structure like the Maginot Line, but stretched about 25 miles from the sea down into the desert. In front of the concrete gun emplacements was a deep wadi, the place looked impregnable and our brigade was instructed to make a frontal assault on it, a very daunting task.

As gunner (I was now back in Sergeant Robson鈥檚 gun team), we dug gun pits, slit trenches and unloaded tonnes of ammunition all day and all night. Bleary eyed we opened up with a huge barrage of 400 rounds per gun, ears were ringing, eyes dazzled by the flashes and fingers burnt as we flung the empty, but still hot, brass cartridge cases out of the pit. Three battalions of D.L.I went at the first assault and casualties were heavy. Not much came back our way, but with so many calls for gunfire, it was obvious that things were not going too well.

The Sergeant Major had pressed into service every available man to bring up more ammo, and by the afternoon 1,000 rounds per gun had been fired, about 12 tons. One by one the guns were packing up and spewing oil, as the recoil mechanism packed in. We were down to four men, as two had collapsed from sheer exhaustion. They slept just a few feet from the muzzle of the 25-pounder, unaware of the mayhem around. No-one had a smoke, some had tried drying tea leaves and wrapping them in 鈥榖og鈥� paper so it was galling to observe hundreds of prisoners being brought in and given a packet of fags each by the escorting MPs. At last our gun packed in and I sank into a sleep as the artificer came to repair the gun.

Two hours later, we were kicked into action again. No one grumbled, our mates up front needed us. They had used scaling ladders to get at the Germans but tanks had appeared to mow them down. Our CO and the mad Major Fawkes, were both awarded the D.S.O for handling a 6-pounder anti tank gun when the crew had been killed, but still the attacks went on. By containing such a larger enemy force here, Monty was able to send the New Zealand Division around the flank in the south, and we knew, it was only a matter of time before the enemy must pull out. In the meanwhile, our Brigade had brought itself to a standstill. In three days and nights we were all knackered.

I don鈥檛 recollect much after that, I know the enemy pulled out and retreated to Gabes. We arrived at a small oasis near the sea with palm trees and olive groves. Instructions were to rest and do nothing for at least two days. Most of us felt afterwards, that we had been set an impossible task and the brigade had been butchered as part of a bigger plan to outflank the Germans. We didn鈥檛 take part in the next battle, but some of us went on POW escort duty whilst the remainder did urgent maintenance work.

The barbed wire enclosure was just behind the lines by the side of a sulphur spring with a few palm trees for shade. Tons of corned beef arrived and hardtack biscuits along with several gallons of water. Our sister brigade, the 150th was in action and after the attack went in, it wasn鈥檛 long before a steady stream of prisoners arrived. They were composed of 4 Italians to a German, and it was interesting to see the difference in their behaviour. The Iti鈥檚 noisily clamoured for 鈥榓qua fresco鈥� (water please) and the Germans remaining aloof in a corner, accepting what was given and saving some of their water for some form of ablutions. After eating the corned beef, I noticed the Germans using stones to hammer out a drinking vessel from the empty small tins.
By the following day we had about 800 prisoners and the clamour for water from the Iti鈥檚 was getting on our nerves, so we decided to take out a working party and give them all our empty four gallon cans to fill up at the sulphur spring watering hole. You can imagine what happened during the night, they were all moaning and groaning with guts ache, many not making it to the pit that was used as a toilet.

The battle in front was going well, so we had to move the prisoners to a bigger compound in Tripoli, two days ride away, thirty to a truck with just one man and a rifle as escort, and a corporal in overall charge. We arrived at a makeshift compound of barbed wire, no one there, just a few rations and cans of water dumped on the sand, the site being very close to the Mareth Line. As the prisoners were dismounting, they set up quite a commotion and pointed to the horizon. There, heading towards us were two large Italian flat lorries loaded with men. The trucks pulled up and 82 men got off with their hands up, and ran into the compound laughing, cheering and embracing their comrades. One even had an accordion that he hardly stopped playing all night. There were enough arms on the trucks to have wiped us out, and it appears they had been hiding on the Mareth Line, living on what they could scrounge, and when the battle moved on, surrendering to the first British troops they came across. The military police took some convincing when we handed over 82 extra men in Tripoli.
The Germans were being squeezed on two sides now, the 1st Army, plus the Yanks at their backs, and the 8th Army still driving on at the front.

The navy was sinking much of the supplies so he was really desperate, then the Africa Corps pulled off a daring coup. During a lull on our front, they attacked a very 鈥榞reen鈥� American division at Kasserine Pass and put it to flight.

The Yanks fled leaving some magnificent equipment behind, tanks, petrol, food, ammo etc. Our armoured division, the 7th, was shocked to be engaged by Grant and Sherman tanks, each with a black cross painted on it. This delayed the inevitable, and at Enfidavile, we fired our last shots in the desert war. The desert war was over, what next? None of us knew except that we faced a 1,500-mile trek back from where we had started. I had an idea that not many of the vehicles would make it.

Tunisia had been a pleasant change from the Libyan Desert, with its olive groves and cultivated fields. The French influence was everywhere but many towns such as Sfax and Sousse were suffering a typhoid epidemic, but we were not on the Cook鈥檚 tour, the enemy still had some life in him. Our part out here was over, but this was only the early round in a long exhausting bout.

How many would still be standing at the final bell.

Pr-BR

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