大象传媒

This story is taken from an interview with Robert Adams at the 2nd Batt RIR event, Campbell College, and has been added to the site with their permission. The authors fully understand the site's terms and conditions. The interviewer was Bruce Logan.
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It was just, the battle of Alamein was just ending when I arrived. I was sent up by truck to join my unit, and unfortunately 鈥�

The commanding officer welcomed us all, and the rest in the group standing in the sand welcomed us. Unfortunately he was killed shortly afterwards in Tunisia, in a minefield along with the chief engineer in 8th Army, Brigadier Kesh.

There鈥檚 a story about Brigadier Kesh. Before he was killed, of course. We were at an obstruction on the roadway, at the Maz line in Tunisia. The Germans had blown a big crater in the road, and we were responsible for getting it filled in, as Engineers. The Germans had a practice of scattering mines in the rubble. So we had to go very carefully. Anyway, we had a group, I was in command of a small section of engineers. And we searched and searched, could find no mines. And along came a young South African bulldozer driver to fill this crater. And Brigadier Kesh drove up in his jeep, called me over and he said 鈥淲hat are you doing?鈥� and I told him. And he said 鈥淗ave you cleared all the mines away from here?鈥�
鈥淥h yes, we鈥檝e checked it very carefully.鈥�
And he says 鈥淭hat young South African up on top of that bulldozer, if a mine goes off he鈥檚 dead. So just stop the job and do another look at it.鈥�

So we just stopped it and carried out a complete check again. We found nothing. But only a few weeks later Brigadier Kesh himself was killed with our CO on a minefield in Tunisia.
He had just taken command of 2 Company.

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