El Alamein, Jack Murray [best autobiographies to read .txt] 📗

Twenty minutes later they had a small fire going. They put sheets up to hide its glow. The land around them was as flat as it was featureless. A fire would be seen from miles away. The risk of attracting the attention of any German patrol was uppermost in their minds.

They pooled a couple of tins of bully beef and Evans made a stew of sorts. As soon as they could, the fire was extinguished. Some blankets had been rescued from the original trucks, but they were barely enough to keep warm in the freezing cold of night.

After such a long sleep that day, Danny found it hard to settle and barely slept an hour or two that night. Instead, he listened to the loud snores of Buller and a distant hum.

Around midnight, still unable to sleep, Danny stood up and went for a walk. Away from the snores of Buller, the hum he’d heard earlier grew louder. He walked a bit further and listened.

There was no question that there were vehicles out there. The question on Danny’s mind was whose they were. They were too far away to make out anything distinguishing about them. The noise grew louder now. They were closer.

Ten minutes later, he saw them. The unmistakable outline of a Mark III Panzers. He counted forty of them rumbling past, half a mile away. They seemed so much larger and fearsome than the British Crusaders. He looked at his watch. It was ten after midnight. In all his time in North Africa he could only remember one night march in a tank. Yet he knew the Germans did this as a matter of course. No wonder they were so difficult to defeat. They were relentless. He watched the column recede into the distance and then he returned to the camp. A voice whispered to him.

‘Jerry?’

It was Gray. Danny nodded and then settled back down into his makeshift bed. He fell asleep an hour later.

-

The jeep set off early next morning. The news that they had nearly been run over by a convoy of German tanks was greeted with dismay. It increased their sense of vulnerability without providing any reassurance that where they were headed was in British hands.

‘What’s that saying?’ asked Evans as the truck bumped along the endless road.

‘Between a rock and place?’ suggested Fitz.

‘No, not that one. But that’s good.’

‘Out of the frying pan?’ continued Fitz.

‘No, not that one either.’

‘Caught between the devil and the deep blue sea?’ asked Danny

‘No,’ replied Evans.

There was silence for a few moments. Then Fitz found the waiting unbearable.

‘And?’

‘Oh nothing. I was just trying to remember it,’ said Evans with a wistful smile.

Fitz stared at Evans and then looked over to Buller.

‘Buller.’

Buller took off his beret and proceeded to beat the Welshman with it. His laughter suggested that the punishment was not quite as painful as Fitz would have liked. They were several miles south of Saunnu when they saw a number of dark shapes in the distance. The consensus was to keep going. From this distance it was impossible to tell if it was friend or foe. If it was the latter, they could certainly get away but their limited supply of fuel was unlikely to keep them safe much longer. With each mile, it became apparent that the shapes in the distance were not moving.

‘Perhaps it’s a tank leaguer,’ suggested Buller.

Danny looked at the way the shapes were arrayed across the horizon. They were tanks. All stationary.

‘No. Stop,’ said Danny. ‘They’re all dead.’

They drove over towards the shapes. Only Danny seemed confident about what they were. The scene that greeted them was horrific. Less than twenty-four hours earlier this had been a battlefield. There were a few dozen tanks littering the desert over a couple of square miles. None of them German or Italian.

‘Bloody hell,’ said Buller. Everyone else was silent as they drove past one blackened hulk after another. It was nightmarish. The twisted metal was still smoking. One tank was glowing red in parts. The air was rank with the acrid smell of cordite. Danny felt tears sting his eyes. It was an enormous graveyard for his fellow tank men. He wondered if he knew any of them. Finally, Gray stopped the truck and they all climbed out. Buller lit a cigarette while Blair walked forward twisting his head left and right like a tourist in an art gallery.

The initial sadness and inertia gave way to something else within Danny. The desire to survive. He went over to Gray.

‘Sarge, we should see what we can salvage from the tanks.’

‘I agree, Shaw. You, Buller, Fitz and Evans each take an area. Search the tanks and find what you can. Anything that might be useful.’

‘Perhaps we can get one of the tanks working again.’

Gray looked dubious about this but nodded anyway. He watched Danny detail the others and the search of the tanks began. It was only as he approached the first tank that Danny realised just how heart-rending a task this would be. Inside many of the tanks lay what remained of young men just like him. The blackened exterior still had wisps of smoke floating gently upwards. On the other side of the tank were two charred figures that had been caught in an explosion. Danny fought back the urge to be sick.

He pushed on towards another tank that had been crippled but was not burnt out. The crew had clearly been able to evacuate in time. On the side were jerricans. He lifted one. It was half full of petrol.

‘Over here,’ shouted Danny. A minute or two later Gray drove up in the truck and they loaded the jerricans. There was no water or food, however. This set the pattern for the rest of the afternoon. They identified tanks that had been crippled and took what they could from them.

Lieutenant Blair surveyed their haul as the light began to dim and the sky turned from a blue to