大象传媒

A Very Close Call

By Ronald Tee

of the 56th Reconnaissance Regiment, 78th "Battleaxe" Division of the British 1st, (later the 8th), Army from 1941 to 1946

as told to his daughter, Robyn.

We pulled into a town about eighty miles from Tunis, very late one afternoon just as the Germans were leaving. We went over to the other side of the town and decided to stay the night since it was already dark. We would move on in the morning.

There's a main road out of the town, along side of a farmhouse, that we harboured up in. Two of us at a time would sit in the open turret of a heavy armoured car. We parked alongside the road, looking down towards the Germans positions, keeping our eyes open for any movement.

Another lad and myself, took our turn around midnight. The other fellow with me was very nervous. He kept seeing things. Finally, he said, 'I see something over there by the fence!' Sure enough, there was.

Out of the gloom came three figures - heavily armed. We could see that they were Germans because of their helmets. They slowly came towards our vehicle. I don't think they saw us in the turret. They just stood there motionless.

As they stood there, another German came from out of the ditch on the other side of the road to join them. By this time, my buddy had disappeared down inside the turret, into the car. I just stood there. Remembering my little bit of German, I said, 'Halt!' With that they did halt! Then I said, 'kommen sie her.'

They looked a bit relieved and all started forward at once. At this point I said, 'Ein! Ein!', which of course means One. It's the only way I could put it, but it seemed to work. Then the leader started walking forward on his own. It wasn't very long before the others started coming behind him. They got very close to my vehicle and I didn't know what I was going to do.

They must have seen my steel helmet and recognized me as a British soldier. All of a sudden, they threw up their arms, threw down their rifles, and gave themselves up.

It was a very, very, strange feeling, because it was nip and tuck, whether I was going to give myself up first! I jumped out of the turret, grabbed the leader, shook his hand and said, 'You silly bugger! I nearly killed you!'

I felt good about that as the years went by. I didn't kill him - I captured him. Eventually after the war they went back to their families.

Incidentally, within twenty minutes or so, that farmhouse we were in, was being heavily shelled. We felt sure that there was at least one, or more German soldiers in that ditch, who never came up. I'm sure they saw what happened, went back, and gave information of who and where, we were to their gunners.

Read more about Ron's life in his book, A British Soldier Remembers. By Ronald Tee and Ken.C Dowsett Printed in Canada by Epic Press.

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