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

preferred to take his chances against the Panzers than face this. And when the shelling stopped would be the moment they came face to face with the enemy tanks. That much was certain. The low hum overhead of bombers had been a continual accompaniment to the noise of battle. If there was any comfort to be drawn it was the knowledge that the enemy would also be on the receiving end of a similar bombardment.

They pushed on for another couple of minutes. Danny glanced down at PG. He was tapping at the dashboard repeatedly.

‘What’s wrong PG?’ asked Danny.

PG was not a man known to worry about things. Any nervousness was hidden behind his normally grim expression. The face that turned around to Danny was white.

‘I don’t know,’ said PG. His voice was tight. ‘We seem to have lost a lot of fuel.’

‘What’s wrong down there?’ this was Benson. He ducked his head inside the turret and glared at PG.

‘Our fuel, sir. It’s disappearing. I don’t know if it’s the damn dashboard or if we were hit.’

-

Manfred gazed ahead through his viewer. The horizon was black and red with fire and smoke. They would soon be within range of the Allied anti-tank guns. It was a case of hold your breath and hope for the best. The tanks were widely dispersed and driving hard towards the chaos and destruction ahead. On the other side of it lay the enemy tanks.

Manfred glanced down at Jentz. Manfred wiled the tank to go faster but the tank was hardly one of Mercedes Benz’s Silver Arrows and Jentz was no von Brauchitsch. No one wanted to endure the hellish rain of shells for one second longer than necessary.

Manfred gripped the wheel that traversed the turret tightly; his muscles tensed for the moment when the tank would be rocked like a boat in a storm. For this was surely a storm towards which they were heading.

Basler was rigid, he kept half a head out of the turret. He was a man who seemed to exist only in the present. This was why Manfred admired him so much. By comparison, Manfred felt like an old man, weighed down by his memory of past times at the Hitler Youth and regret for not realising what it had cost him.

They forged ahead and soon the first shattering screams of shells shredded the air around them. The tank was filled with the foul-smelling stench of war. More and more derelict tanks cluttered the landscape. Every second brought them closer to the other side of this hellish bombardment. There they would hopefully hit the sides of the British tanks with the wedge formation they’d adopted.

The first evidence of the destroyed gun placements dotted the landscape. Dead bodies and body parts strewn like flower petals in early autumn. But this was no Eden. They cleared the ridge and had first sight of the enemy in the distance.

-

Danny noticed the shelling had eased. They seemed to have reached a No Man’s Land. But this was a graveyard with blackened metal acting as tombstones to the fallen.

PG slowed the tank down at Benson’s request. The captain was, once more, with his head outside the turret gazing at the heat haze in the distance. Shots pinged off the tank.

‘Careful, sir,’ warned Danny. ‘Jerry’s still out there.’

‘Thank you, Shaw, I’m quite aware of that,’ replied Benson, who remained where he was.

Danny gazed through his viewer but could see nothing in the shimmering silver and black horizon. Plumes of smoke were still rising. Distant bombing was visible as the Allied twenty-five pounders and RAF gave the Afrika Korps a taste of what the tanks had just been through. Dense black smoke with orange flames, some twenty feet high, provided a guard of honour for the newly arriving Allied tanks.

‘Ahh,’ said Benson after some moments. ‘I think I see our friends now.’

Andrews glanced up at Benson then met Danny’s eyes. The look on his face was clear. Time to get ready.

‘Distance three zero, zero, zero yards.’

The radio crackled to life.

‘Ready, Shaw?’ asked Benson.

‘Yes, sir, High Explosive HE.’

Danny looked through his viewer. He saw the dark shapes moving in the distance. They reminded him of the Errol Flynn movie he’d seen a few months back when Custer first sees the Sioux warriors in the distance. The wide ridge, as far as Danny could see, was filled with dark shapes. In between lay the remains of what had been and what would be.

A tank graveyard.

His finger hovered over the firing button.

‘Fire.’

47

‘How far do you think?’ asked Manfred.

‘Three kilometres and closing,’ said Basler without taking his eyes away from his binoculars.

Still too far for them to do any real damage but they would soon be within the range of the new Allied tanks. Some of the Mark IV’s opened up. They were similarly equipped with a seventy-five-millimetre gun. This gave them some chance, at least. Manfred gripped his wheel and began to work it left then right to test the traverse.

Jentz was steering in a sharp zig zag too, aware that the Allied High Explosive HE rounds would soon be landing near them. Manfred’s left arm was already chaffing against the turret ring. The amount of room wasn’t enough for someone of his height. The rapid swings being performed by Jentz added to his discomfort.

The horizon erupted into a series of white puffs of smoke. The enemy had commenced firing. Basler confirmed this but added nothing else. What was there to say? Within minutes, if they survived that long, they’d be in a melee with the enemy. Manfred glanced down at Kiel. The loader nodded and used his eyes to indicate the HE shell had been loaded.

The first set of shells exploded around a hundred metres in front of them. Rock and dust flew twenty metres up into the air.

Jentz moved in line behind a derelict tank some five hundred metres ahead. Good idea, though Manfred. It wasn’t much but it, at least, might persuade the gunners on the other