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

Danny saw a soldier kneeling in a crater. There was a dead body beside him. The boy, for he was no older than Danny, was crying.

‘Eighty-eights,’ said Danny as he surveyed the carnage.

‘Aye,’ agreed PG. ‘Eighty-eights. Must have caught them at dawn.’

‘Certainly looks that way,’ Benson, speaking for the first time since they’d entered the first few hundred yards of the battle zone. The sound of shelling up ahead was a reminder that they, too, would soon be encountering those same eighty-eights that had wrought such terror on the tank crews a few hours earlier. ‘We can’t let their deaths be in vain, men. We have to break through.’

Danny nodded. What else could the captain say? It was clear that the resolve of the men in the tank had been shaken by witnessing the carnage of earlier.

Danny put his eyes to the viewer. The haze on the horizon was making it difficult to see very much except for the tanks ahead and the black smoke rising skyward. What lateral vision he did have revealed an impressive sight. Left and right, there were tanks on the march. Some were 3 RTR, others were attached to other regiments like the Staffs and the Notts.

PG began to test the steering causing the tank to zig left then zag right. A nod from Benson was Archie Andrews’ cue to test the traverse of the turret. He wheeled left causing the turret to turn several degrees before reversing this and restoring the gun and the turret to its original position.

Progress was slow. They had travelled for over an hour yet still remained a few miles away from the fighting. The odd effect of this was to increase the desire of the men to just get on with it. The sound of battle was unquestionably growing louder, however. They were in a No Man’s Land now. The first signs of German dead were visible along with some Italian and even some German soldiers marching towards the Allied lines to become prisoners of war. This gave them all renewed heart. PG began to whistle ‘Deutchland Uber Alles’ much to the amusement of the rest of the crew.

Danny smiled but was reluctant to join in. Whistling is difficult when your throat is tighter than a hangman’s noose. His eyes remained fixed to his viewer, but the heat haze was stronger now. However, for the first time, he saw the telegraph poles. They were nearing the Rahman track. On the other side lay the Afrika Korps.

Every second brought them closer to their destiny.

-

Basler didn’t have to give Jentz a verbal order. He pointed ahead. Jentz responded immediately and they were off. It was nearing eleven in the morning. Only another five hours until dusk, thought Manfred wearily. He joined Basler in standing outside the turret. They looked around at the battered remnants of the Regiment 8.

‘How many tanks do we have left?’ asked Manfred.

‘I don’t know. Five perhaps. The other regiments haven’t been hit so badly. The 21st Panzers are at full strength. Who knows how many tanks the Italians have left.’

‘Enough to hold off the British?’

The answer was ‘probably yes’ but they both knew that the Afrika Korps was on borrowed time. The wave after wave of attacks from the Allies was sapping their strength like a leak in an engine.

The dust thrown up by the tanks made it difficult to ascertain their strength but by the sound of their engines, Manfred thought it was less than fifty.

Basler looked around him and said to himself, ‘With this we must halt a division?’ He shook his head.

‘Who takes over from the captain?’ asked Manfred suddenly.

Basler glanced at Manfred. Oddly, he seemed amused by the question. Manfred shrugged. He was curious.

‘Not me, if that’s what you are asking.’

‘It was,’ replied Manfred.

‘Lieutenant Lindner,’ said Basler, putting the field glasses back up to his eyes. Manfred wondered if he was hurt at being overlooked.

‘I thought he’d been wounded,’ responded Manfred after a few minutes of silence.

‘He was. Mustn’t have been too bad.’

They sat in silence listening to the sound of battle: the crump of anti-tank guns, the chatter of machine guns, the crack of rifle fire. Then, with a nod, Basler indicated that Manfred should return to his position. The explosions were growing louder. The smoke thicker. It hung like a shroud in the air, obscuring the enemy ahead. The smell of death was everywhere now.

‘Did you see anything?’ asked Kleff indicating towards the east with his eyes.

‘Not yet. Can certainly hear it,’ said Manfred. The distant booms were increasingly less distant.

The tank moved ahead cautiously. Within minutes they would be within range of the enemy anti-tank shells. That would be Jentz’s signal to speed up and the column would disperse.

Manfred felt his stomach begin to churn once more. The brutal reality of what they were about to face was made all the more acute by seeing the seemingly indestructible Stiefelmayer fall.

-

Shells began to rain down on them. Danny, in fact the whole tank, flinched as a loud explosion to their right destroyed one of the Allied tanks. PG was still manoeuvring the tank left and right. In this he was helped by the crippled or destroyed tanks acting as slalom posts.

The concussive impact of the shells was physical. The earth was shaking at the barrage they were going through. If this is what it was like now with many guns disabled, what must it have been like earlier for the first assault, wondered Danny. Bullets began to ping uselessly against the tank like hail on a window.

McLeish, who had access to a periscope, began to update Danny on what he could see a few minutes into the onslaught.

‘Must be half a dozen tanks down already. I can see four fires.’

‘Anyone getting out?’ asked Danny.

‘Some, not many,’ answered McLeish ominously.

As he said this another explosion, close by, rocked the tank. The sooner they could get out of this barrage of anti-tank fire the better. There was no response they could offer. Danny